After 26 years of serving customers at Silver Diner in Arlington, Dorothy Johnson — known to regulars as “Mama D” — is hanging up her uniform.
Johnson will wait on customers for the last time this Saturday (March 7) at the Ballston restaurant, located at 750 N. Glebe Road. Silver Diner will hold a going away party at the restaurant at 1:30 p.m. so coworkers and customers can say their goodbyes, according to a press release.
Johnson started at the restaurant’s former Clarendon location in 1999, a few years after the diner first opened at 3200 Wilson Blvd. She stayed through the restaurant’s relocation to Ballston in December 2022, when the Clarendon property was sold for redevelopment.
“We are going to be at a huge loss without her,” said Silver Diner President and CEO Glenn D’Amore. “She has such a huge customer following due to her winning personality, great customer service, impeccable execution and delivery. She could not be more loved.”
D’Amore said Johnson helped ease the transition to the new location, talking up the Ballston spot and promising longtime customers that she would make the move too.
“The relocation was not easy for many longtime customers at first,” D’Amore said. “But, with Mama D talking up the new location and promising that she’d make the move too, customers more readily supported the transition.”
Johnson said she has stayed so long because she loves the hospitality industry and the relationships she has built.
“I’m really going to miss my co-workers and my customers,” she said, “especially my many long-time regular customers.”
She and her husband have been living in D.C. over the past year while building a new house in South Carolina, where one of their five children lives.
Silver Diner said in the press release that it has retained more than 323 employees for 10 years or more, with Mama D one of the longest-tenured among them.
“Silver Diner has a culture that feels so much like family,” D’Amore said. “It’s easy to stay in a job if you love the people you work with.”
