Monday, April 25, 2005 | 8:22 a.m.
Sugar's Home Plate is the only restaurant in Overton where a customer can have a smoke without going outside.
Except, last week.
Until Sunday, patrons of the popular local eatery had to stub their butts before entering. Small placards on each table and along the bar counter said there would be no smoking allowed from April 15 through Sunday, "In thoughtful memory of Michele Ipharr and Hank Beals. Thank you for not smoking."
Both Moapa Valley women died of lung cancer, and Sugar's owner Judy Metz wants people to remember the women and think about their choices.
"I'm not against people making their own choice," Metz, a nonsmoker, said. "I have a lot of friends and a son who smoke."
And, she lost two of those friends.
Ipharr, a longtime waitress at Sugar's, died almost two years ago.
"She was 50-ish, a wonderful free spirit and a wonderful person," Metz said.
Her voice cracked as she fought tears.
"She fought it really hard," Metz recalled. "She had chemotherapy for a number of months, and then she went really fast."
Still fighting the urge to cry, Metz then spoke of Henrietta "Hank" Beals, who was secretary of the Moapa Valley Town Advisory Board, of which Metz is a member. Beals also wrote for the Moapa Valley Progress weekly newspaper.
Beals died March 10 at Nathan Adelson Hospice in Las Vegas.
"She thought she had the flu, but she wasn't getting better," Metz said. "The doctors took an X-ray and saw multiple spots on her lungs.
"It was just so astonishing," she added. "Within three weeks she was gone."
National Cancer Institute figures estimate 165,500 people will die and another 172,500 will be diagnosed with lung cancer in the United States this year. Lung cancer deaths among women were highest in Nevada, where about 30 percent of women smoke and they die at a rate of 45 per 100,000.
Two of these women are sorely missed over at Sugar's, where the waitresses take the phone off the hook when the restaurant is packed or the dinner special runs out.
Some customers eat there two or three times a day, Metz said. A fair number are smokers, but none minded snuffing their cigarettes last week. She has no plans to make nonsmoking permanent, though some patrons suggested it.
Sugar's has a bar area and video poker machines. Smoking kind of goes with the territory. And besides, she said, it the only restaurant in town where smokers are welcome.
Metz chose last week to make her statement because it ended with the Relay for Life American Cancer Society benefit this past weekend.
Twenty-six teams of 10 to 25 members each camped out at Moapa Valley High School from 7 p.m. Friday to 7 a.m. Saturday and took turns walking laps around the track. Participants hoped to raise at least $20,000 for cancer research and prevention.
Metz hopes the effort at Sugar's raised some awareness as well.
"I am hoping that maybe somebody I know and somebody I care about will not smoke," Metz said. "Maybe they'll say, 'If I don't have to smoke in there, maybe I don't have to smoke.' "
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