A Life Together

Jon and Paula Bush build a new life and business after tragedy.

By Brianna Swisher and Katie Lusso

CANAAN VALLEY, W.Va. – The husband-and-wife team that owns Big John’s Family Fixin’s restaurant share both a similar history of tragedy as well as a unique love affair.

Twenty-one years ago, friends introduced Jon Bush to Paula Tacy. Jon lived in Tennessee and Paula in West Virginia, but each had recently lost a spouse. They began talking on the phone and realized that the similarities didn’t end there.

Jon Bush manages his kitchen staff at Big John’s Family Fixin’s restaurant in Canaan Valley, W.Va.

Paula’s husband and father of her two children, a telephone company lineman, had died in a work accident in Timberline, W. Va., 10 days after his birthday.

Jon’s wife and mother of three of his sons had died in a car accident, 10 days after her birthday.

Both deaths had occurred on a Wednesday at 10:55 a.m.

With so much in common, Jon and Paula bonded quickly over the phone. “We had a great relationship on the phone long before we met,” Jon said.

Eventually, Jon drove all the way from Tennessee to West Virginia to take Paula out. The next morning, Jon went back home and went back to work.

“I went back and tried to discredit all of it because I thought that it was just too weird,” Jon said. “All of these intersects going on in our lives.”

However, they continued to talk and decided to take a trip with all the kids to Disney World to see how the kids would do together.

Prior to the trip, Jon had put his house up for sale, but it wasn’t selling.

“I said, ‘Okay. If God’s really in this I’m going to find out,” Jon recalled. “I went to the realtor and said, ‘We’re going to jack the price up on this house.’ So I raised the price on the house, I think it was 10 percent.”

The next day, he had two offers on the house. So he sold the house and came to West Virginia on Memorial Day of 1989. He had never been to West Virginia before, nor did he have any relatives here. But Paula was here. The couple eventually married and blended their families.

Jon and Paula enjoy traveling and have been to Italy several times. They fell in love with the area of Tuscany after watching the movie Under the Tuscan Sun so they decided they had to visit.

“Paula gets a real kick out of the way that woman go to work in their stiletto heels and full dresses on scooters,” Jon said.

Paula Bush, right, and employee, Julie Berry, sift through orders at Big John’s Family Fixin’s restaurant in Canaan Valley, W.Va.

“We fell in love with it,” Paula said.

They also loved the authentic Italian food and incorporated traditional Italian cuisine into their restaurant’s menu.

“On Fridays, Saturdays, and sometimes Sundays we do some very nice Italian cooking,” Jon said. “We haven’t even touched the surface of Italian cooking though. It’s so diverse.”

As one might expect with a blended family of eight, the Bush’s restaurant is family oriented. They don’t serve alcohol or allow smoking. They have many arcade games and an ice cream parlor in the restaurant.

Remembering the story of how they met, Jon looks at his wife and chuckles and says, “It gets more wild than that.” He says that the rest of the story “is saved for a book someday.”

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