A popular diner in Glenville known for its breakfast and lunch is closing.

The sizzling grill at Sky Port Diner on Freemans Bridge Road will soon shut off for the last time.

Regular customers and loyal employees say the place has hardly changed in 66 years—but every day, what’s familiar is made new again.

“Patty’s always got a creative menu going on,” said regular customer Rick Rorick. “Pretty much it gets to be like a family thing after a while, you know? Coming in here on a weekly basis, I’ve created a lot of new friends.”

Owner Patty Sherman’s mother and father, Dorothy and John Dewey, bought the former Becker’s hotdog stand and opened it as Sky Port in 1957.

“I would like to thank everybody for supporting us all these years it’s been a really beautiful business. We’ve had a lot of great employees and we’ve met, our customers are just absolutely fantastic,” said Sherman.

Most of her family has worked here, including sisters Joanna Dewey and Mary Ann Parker.

“My mother, she would work here during the day and at night, and then she had us kids,” she said.

The place is brimming with memories and tales. But it’s a fish that became family, not food, that landed Sky Port in the national spotlight.

Dick the fish became part of the diner’s daily ecosystem for 17 years, after customers gifted him one cold winter night.

“They brought him in to us in a frozen bag and my mother brought him back to life,” Sherman said.

But it was what Sherman and a customer did when Dick got sick in the early 2000s that lives in Ripley’s ‘Believe it or Not.’  

“We made a device for him, so he could come float to the top and eat his food,” Sherman said, recalling they also fed him peas with the skin off, which apparently helped the fish ailing with swim bladder disease.

With Sherman’s retirement and no one else in the family to take over, the diner will close Dec. 31. It’s an emotional goodbye. But she’s optimistic a young potential buyer will keep the place alive as a bakery.

“I’m really excited that everything isn’t going to be torn down. I’m happy that things worked out that this beautiful young lady is going to be taking over,” she said.