Table Rock Tavern opened on December 5, 2021. Jill Broyles owner and operator of the business is happy to have a place where people can gather.
A local Shell Knob business recently opened its doors after a year of renovations. The Table Rock Tavern, opened on December 5, 2021.
A new business in town, the Table Rock Tavern has been a huge hit for the last couple of months. Jill Broyles, owner and operator is excited for the summer season.
Jill Broyles, owner and operator of the Table Rock Tavern, said that the idea came to her after decades of visiting the lake.
“I’ve been coming to the lake area with my parents since 1979,” she said. “We would camp in Viola for two weeks every year.”
While she is originally from the Wichita, Kansas, area, Jill moved to Carthage in 2020.
Jill Broyles, owner and operator of the Table Rock Tavern, along side her son, Adam Cook, and daughter, Alex Cook, who help her run the business.
“I would come to my lake house here in Shell Knob on the weekends,” Jill said. “One day, I was on Facebook and I asked, on the Table Rock Group page what there is to do in the area, and if they would be interested in a sports bar?”
Jill discovered, if she built it, they would come.
“Within two days the Facebook post had over 600 comments,” she said. “It blew up from there.”
Jill leases the property from Mike Fitzpatrick. Based on the Facebook response, Mike’s wife reached out to Jill and told her Mike might have the perfect property.
“Mike has been great to work with,” Jill said. “It all started in January 2021. So there was a year of renovations, and Mike paid for all of them.”
Jill worked managing an assisted living facility until April 2021, when she moved to Shell Knob full time.
“I wanted to oversee stuff,” she said. “We had some really big projects happening, and some smaller things that I wanted to be able to manage. I wanted to help guide the contractor.”
Jill said Joe, the contractor, was also fantastic to work with.
“He built the bar top,” she said. “It was like a baby to him, he is very creative.”
After all the building, Jill said the best part about the Table Rock Tavern is watching relationships being built.
“I have seen friendships built here,” she said. “I hope that I am filling a need in the community, and this is a place people can always come to build friendships and relationships.”
Jill has a master's degree in aging studies, which is what she had made a career out of. But, she bartended in her early 20s.
“Because of COVID, the government made my line of work not much fun,” she said. “I had to lock the doors, and I couldn’t let people be with their families. There was a need in the Shell Knob area, and I am excited to be a part of the solution.”
Jill operates the Table Rock Tavern alongside her son, Adam, and daughter, Alex, and one other employee, Brooke, who is from Cassville.
“I am hoping to add more people during the tourist season,” she said. “We have a small hometown family feel, and we are invested in the local community and businesses. The tourist community will help, but the locals are what really drive a business.”
Jill Broyles, owner and operator of the Table Rock Tavern, said this bar top was the creative work of the contractor whom she worked with for nearly a year, Joe VanTrump.
The sports bar feel is exactly what Jill envisioned.
“We have a real simple bar food menu,” she said. “Burgers, fries, onion rings, mushrooms, that kind of thing. I wanted to focus on a bar that serves food, instead of a restaurant that has a bar.”
Jill feels like that is something that helps set the Table Rock Tavern apart form other local businesses.
“We are a clean, non-smoking, family establishment,” she said. “We aren’t a chain. The bar is full scale with a big variety. People really wanted non-smoking, that was a big part of the comments on the post I made.”
Jill said there is not really any competition with other local places. Everyone just kind of does their own thing.
“This is fun for me, I enjoy it,” Jill said. “I also enjoy fishing, and my dog, J.B.”
J.B. has become a patron of the Tavern himself.
Table Rock Tavern is currently closed on Tuesdays, but open at 11 a.m. the rest of the week. People can follow their Facebook page at
Table Rock Tavern.
The VFW’s motto is “To honor the dead by helping the living,” and, in short, Buddy Poppies are one way to do just that.
Concerned that World War I veterans who had made the ultimate sacrifice were being forgotten too soon, Madame E. Guerin, of France, took inspiration from Colonel John McCrae's poem, "In Flanders Fields,” which spoke of poppies growing in an Allied graveyard "between the crosses, row on row," and began a push to have veterans’ organization sport red silk poppies in memory of World War I veterans.
The Buddy Poppy idea caught on in the U.S. in May 1922, when the VFW conducted the first nationwide distribution of poppies in the United States.
Later that year, at its National Encampment in Seattle in August 1922, the VFW adopted the poppy as its official memorial flower.
However, Guerin’s American and French Children's League, which supplied the poppies, had been dissolved shortly before the VFW's 1922 poppy sale, making the silk flowers hard to come by for the upcoming 1923 sale.
From adversity blooms inspiration, and the VFW formed an elegant solution that would simultaneously keep the flowers circulating as a reminder of the sacrifices so many veterans made in the name of freedom, and help living veterans who were in need, a tradition that continues to this day.
During its1923 encampment, the VFW decided that its Buddy Poppies would be assembled by disabled veterans and veterans in need, who would, in turn, be paid for their work to provide them with financial assistance. The next year, disabled veterans at the Buddy Poppy factory in Pittsburgh, Penn., assembled VFW Buddy Poppies. The designation "Buddy Poppy" was adopted at that time.
In February 1924, the VFW registered the name Buddy Poppy with the U.S. Patent Office that allows it to guarantee that all poppies bearing that name and the VFW label are genuine products of the work of disabled and needy veterans. No other organization, firm, or individual can legally use the name Buddy Poppy.
Today, Buddy Poppies are still assembled by disabled and needy veterans in VA Hospitals.
VFW posts throughout the country order Buddy Poppies from the national VFW organization, then distribute them throughout their individual communities leading up to Memorial Day in exchange for donations. Those donations are used by individual VFW posts to take care of local veterans in need.
With that business model, the VFW is able to raise money for various veteran programs on a local and a national level.
The Buddy Poppy program provides compensation to the veterans who assemble the poppies, provides financial assistance in maintaining state and national veterans' rehabilitation and service programs, partially supports the VFW National Home for Children and allows the local posts to support veterans at the local level.
Over the years, Tom Wolfe VFW Post 4207 has continued the tradition, selecting “Poppy Girls” to represent the post and its poppy sales for many years.
VFW Post No. 4207 Auxiliary Buddy Poppy Coordinator Linda Adams and VFW Post No. 4207 Quartermaster Randall Adams said the local post celebrated Memorial Day and the Buddy Poppy distribution by selecting a Poppy Girl each May for decades. That tradition ended several years ago, when the local auxiliary disbanded.
However, the auxiliary has been reformed and the post and auxiliary are hoping to bring the tradition back.
But that’s not all that’s changed. Linda said the post traditionally collected donations and distributed poppies at the intersection of U.S. 60 and Highway 37 until a few years ago, when safety concerns changed the location.
Since then, with the exception of last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the post has distributed at Walmart.
As long as COVID-19 restrictions allow, Randall said the plan this year is to distribute poppies at Walmart, Price Cutter and Lowe's.
Randall said the post hopes to raise about $1,000 each year through poppy donations to support local veterans.
While the use of poppy funds are strictly regulated, Randall said the Monett Post typically has a single use for the money – to support local veterans in need.
“We use it to help the people who need it,” Randall said. “The vets come to us and tell us what they need, and we try to help them out however we can.”
He added that veterans who are in need do not need to be members of the VFW to seek help. He said the organization is there to help any veteran in need, any way it can.
