EPHRAIM—Barbara Bradley, known as the “Breakfast Lady” at Willow Creek Inn, was honored Saturday, May 7, by the Lady Badgers softball team by being asked to throw the first pitch.
Barbara Bradley, the “Breakfast Lady” at Willow Creek Inn in Ephraim, poses with members of the SLCC Bruins softball team who stayed at the motel to play the Lady Badgers at a home game this weekend.
“I love being around the guests” (at the Willow Creek), Bradley said. “I learn so much about them.” Many of the guests are sports teams from visiting schools coming to play at Snow College, and being a graduate of Snow herself, Bradley loves to talk with the students.
She gets all kinds of questions from, such students and other guests, such as, “How can someone stay overnight in “that castle” in Manti?” (They’re referring to the Manti Temple.)
Bradley and her husband, Jess. are both from Manti, and both have degrees from Snow College. They have three children, eight grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren and one great-great grandchild.
Barbara Bradley throws the first pitch at a Snow College Softball home game last Saturday
She worked much of her career as a cake decorator at Smith’s Food and Drug and later as a store manager on the Wasatch Front. Jess taught industrial arts and math in Roosevelt and Ogden before opening up his own cabinet shop in West Jordan, which he ran for 36 years.
Upon his retirement, the Bradleys returned to Sanpete County. “We wanted to be back to where things were simple,” Bradley said. “We wanted to get away from the hubbub of the city.”
Bradley has worked at Willow Creek Inn for 13 years. She was hired by Jill and Ted Meikle and now works for the new owner, Laila Jacobsen, and her husband, Joe. “Laila has supported me through so much,” Bradley said.
She said her boss was particularly supportive when her husband died cancer this year. “I don’t know what I would have done” if Laila not worked at Willow Creek Inn, Bradley said.
Bradley spent the winter in Quartzsite, Arizona, where she has family, and will return there in the fall. She says her husband’s death took a lot out of her, and it helps to spend part of the year with family. However, she will continue to work at the Willow Creek Inn in the spring and summer.
