More than 40 years ago, Henry Belair got a little risqué with his downtown Kennewick restaurant.

He introduced go-go dancing at the popular diner on Auburn Street.

The restaurant was known as O’Henry’s until the “girls” came dancing.

That’s when O’Henry’s Go-Go sprang to life, grabbing national attention.

The reason for the interest? Henry’s go-go dancers had to be 60 years old or older.

The idea came from Henry’s innovative nature. The native Tri-Citian left just long enough to see action in the Pacific during World War II aboard a submarine tender.

He returned to a Kennewick life of business prosperity and public service, and served on the Kennewick City Council.

His fertile mind pounced on seemingly off-the-wall ideas or comments to create a fabric of innovation at his restaurant. Once, for example, he set closing time for his restaurant not at 9 p.m., but at 8:59 p.m. It opened in the morning with a similarly unusual start time.

Early on, after changing the family bakery business that started in 1927 at the same location between Kennewick and First avenues, Henry offered 21 flavors of ice cream in his ice cream parlor. 

A donut and coffee shop followed.

Even naming his restaurant “O’Henry’s” came out of a repeated comment by a customer who was always marveling at Henry's creative changes: “Oh, Henry, you’re always changing things.”

Fran “Bubbles” Spooner, left, the original O’Henry’s Go-Go dancer, stands with Henry Koch inside O’Henry’s Go-Go restaurant. Spooner was a professional dancer whose nickname referred to her bubbly personality. 

| Courtesy East Benton County Historical Society

As the years passed, the 1941 Kennewick High School graduate aged, but he refused to think old.

He embraced a favorite quote by George Burns, the crafty, youthful-thinking entertainer who lived to be 100: "Remember one thing, you can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.”

Henry had T-shirts made up emblazoned with: “I’m not old, I’m a recycled teenager!”

When he reached his mid-70s, he quoted entertainer Mickey Rooney at that age: “I’m 25 years old three times.”

He once came up with the idea for square-shaped donuts, bread double wrapped, which Henry said would make it last twice as long, and he made an “all-day cookie.” It was the size of a dinner plate.

His go-go girls idea came from another off-the-cuff remark from a customer.

When customers arrived to dine, Henry motioned them to a table and quipped that “the dancing girls will be out soon.”

One day a customer asked him just how long it was going to be before the dancing girls arrived.

The idea struck Henry’s fancy and he solicited in the help wanted section of the Tri-City Herald seeking applicants to be go-go dancers.

Many of his coffee drinkers and diners in his eatery were 60 and beyond.

“It seemed natural to get someone our own age,” he said at the time.

A dozen would-be Ginger Rogers expressed interest, and five took it further to debut as his 60-and-older go-go dancers. They were tastefully attired.

Fran Spooner was the headliner. At the time, she was a Kennewick seamstress, but she at one time entertained with her name in lights and performing on stage with the likes of Bob Hope.

Henry Belair, left, poses with Fran “Bubbles” Spooner, who stuffed balloons into her shirt for extra “oomph,” inside the downtown Kennewick restaurant in 1984. She was the original O’Henry’s Go-Go dancer. All of the go-go dancers had to be 60 years old or older.

| Courtesy East Benton County Historical Society

The sensational idea went national and beyond. CBS Morning News reported on it, as did the Wall Street Journal. Famed radio personality Paul Harvey spoke of it on his nationwide broadcast, and a television station from Japan sent a team to film them.

From that turn of events, Henry changed O’Henry’s to O’Henry’s Go-Go.

“Bubbles,” as Fran Spooner became known as, was Henry's most celebrated go-go dancer.

The daughter of Nettie Wills, a Kennewick pioneer, Fran became a professional dancer while still a teenager, performing at the Winter Garden Theatre in Seattle. 

By her 20s, performing as Francis Wills, her name was in lights at the Palace Theatre in New York.

Fran performed with vaudeville entertainer Eddie Foy, whose life story was told in the 1955 film, “The Seven Little Foys,” featuring Bob Hope as Eddie.

Fran performed with Hope and with comedian Jerry Cologna, entertaining troops in World War II. She stood in for famed burlesque queen Sally Rand when she was forced to miss a show and attended Rand’s wedding at Rand’s personal invitation.

Wallace Beery, winner of the Best Actor Academy Award for his role in 1931’s “The Champ,” was another major star sharing the stage with Spooner.

Spooner returned to her Kennewick roots in 1966, and in 1976 was named Kennewick’s Woman of Achievement.

The space that once housed Henry’s O’Henry’s Go-Go has seen its share of restaurant turnover over the years. Since March 2023, it’s been home to Picante Mexican Taqueria. With a name that means “hot and spicy,” we like to think Henry would’ve appreciated the current tenant’s fiery flair.

Gale Metcalf of Kennewick is a lifelong Tri-Citian, retired Tri-City Herald employee and volunteer for the East Benton County Historical Museum. He writes the monthly history column.