Fort Wright restaurant of 53 years closes

FORT WRIGHT, Ky. -
A Fort Wright restaurant that is a Northern Kentucky institution served its last supper Sunday night...at least for a while.

Walt's Hitching Post welcomed many of its regulars Sunday evening with the news the restaurant needed to close and rethink business.

"There's sadness for employees, our customers and the community as well," said Billy Melton, one of several sisters who have been running the business since their father, Bill, passed away three years ago. "We have decided to regroup, reassess our business, and remodel," said Melton.

The parking lot was packed...and inside sat patrons anxious to boast about who'd been coming there longer."

Burrt Travis can brag he's been coming for nearly fifty years. "I knew Billy (the patriarch) when he opened it....I've had parties here, I've brought my family here. My kids came here, now my grandkids come here. It's going to be a loss for the entire community. There's nothing else you can say. Everybody's sad," he said.

Travis is the attorney for the Brotherhood Singers, who sing at the place during the week. Eric Riley and the rest of the group sang one last time in a room in the back. "We heard that they were closing the doors, so we wanted to come out and eat one last time," said Riley.

Also in the house, Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning and his wife Mary, who've enjoyed eating ribs and chicken livers at the restaurant for more than 40 years. "Bill Melton was a very good friend and the Melton family has been a very good friend of ours for a long, long time and we're sorry to see that they're going to be closing down for a while," said Bunning.

Aside from the business at stake, Amber Melton wants to see the restaurant come back...so that she can see her kids run around and enjoy it as she did growing up. The business has been at the center of a lot of people's lives, she said. "It's a lot of people's "Cheers" and everyone here is just family and we really are going to work as hard as possible to get everything back and up and Walt's will be better than ever," she said.