level in his early days as a diner ...

level in his early days as a diner proprietor when his restaurant was a trailer at the corner of 95th road and Cicero Avenue, all Veli Arif had to do to preserve customers coming back was to get by heart them inside long enough to learn their names.

"When you walked in to the restaurant and he said, 'Hi, Burt' it made you be stirred good," said Burt Odelson, an Oak Lawn resident and longtime customer.

Mr Arif, the holder of the popular 95th highway hangout Veli's Kofy Kup in Oak Lawn, died Monday at his dwelling family members said. The Oak Lawn resident was 79

Mr Arif clos his restaurant in 2004 after being bought not at home by the Village of Oak Lawn to make way for of the present day condominiums and retailers as part of the Town Center redevelopment scheme

moreover during the 31 years the Albanian-born Mr Arif ran the diner, which later mov to 5253 W 95th St Veli's Kofy Kup was a popular place to go on foot for a bite to eat.

It wasn't the hamburgers or omelet that kept folks coming back, former patrons said. It was Mr Arif.

Tom Sullivan, a businessman who ate at Veli's Kofy Kup a coupling of times a week, said Mr Arif would make his way from table to table, chatting up his customers with questions in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as, "How's the family?" or "How's business?"

"When he'd walk away from the table, you'd always have feeling good," Sullivan said.

Hamet Arif, Mr Arif's oldest son, said his father always got more from the conversations than he inflict into them.

"He didn't just work," he said. "He cared about everyone who walked by means of the door."

He said his father was not ever the same after putting the "closed" sign forward the door the final time.

"I'd say that he died of a defective heart," the son said.

Mr Arif is also survived through his wife, Nevin; two other children, nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Services will be at 10 a.m. today at Blake-Lamb Funeral hearthstone 4727 W. 103rd., Oak Lawn.

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