Liberty students make life sweeter at doughnut shop

It all started with a pastry craving.

A few months ago, Perry Petrozelli and a friend, both students at Liberty University, experienced a deep desire for Dunkin’ Donuts, but didn’t know where to find them. So they enlisted the help of a friend with a GPS.

The GPS directed them to what was once a Dunkin’ Donuts shop at the corner of Leesville Road and Timberlake roads.

“So we went there, and it was really late,” Petrozelli said. “We figured it wouldn’t be open.”

Though it was near closing time, the owner, Jyl VanDusen, waved them inside.

“She was just really different, right off the bat,” Petrozelli said, “one of the most delightful people at 9, 10 at night that you would ever meet.”

VanDusen had owned The Bakery for more than two years, and she said for a long time, people only knew it as a former Dunkin’ Donuts.

“They should have named it ‘the place that used to be the Dunkin’ Donuts on the corner of Leesville and Timberlake,’ cause everybody knew that,” she said.

No more, thanks to a multiplicity of factors, not the least being the fire Petrozelli helped to spark.

“People, when you say The Bakery, they know where it is,” VanDusen said.

“It makes me feel good.”

VanDusen said her husband Bill has been facing serious health problems, and she shared as much with Petrozelli. She also told Petrozelli of the attendant financial difficulties.

The only thing she asked of him?

“I said, ‘Just pray.’”

Then on a Thursday night in mid-February, a few months after that first visit, VanDusen got a call at home from a frantic cashier.

“She said, ‘Jyl, there are like 20 people in the lobby,’” VanDusen said.

So she rushed to The Bakery, only to find an equal or greater number gathered outside of the building.

Inside, she found Petrozelli.

“I just smiled. I said, ‘What did you guys do?’”

As it turned out, the conversations Petrozelli and his friend, Justin Warner, had with VanDusen sparked an idea in their minds.

They went to Tyler McClure, the resident assistant on Petrozelli’s hall, for help.

“She told them her story about her husband and about financial difficulties,” McClure said, “so they came back and the idea was kind of thrown at me and my roommate.”

The plan? Simply to help VanDusen.

“We kind of helped these guys get together some flyers and spread the word around,” McClure said, and the result spoke for itself.

“(We bought) almost every doughnut she had in the place,” said McClure.

The amount they put into the business totaled upwards of $200.

But the blessing didn’t end there.

“We didn’t even know we had a goal until we were all there,” Petrozelli said.

The group of students gathered in a circle, with the intent of saying a prayer for VanDusen, but she took them by surprise.

“When she came out, she decided to pray for us,” McClure said.

“We went with the intent of blessing her, and in return she blessed us so much more.”

But the students had the final say in the matter.

Passing around a bag, they all put in spare change and some bills as a personal gift to VanDusen.

“When I counted the money, it was a little over $504,” she said. “What they didn’t know was that I had a medical bill that had been $550.”

She had already paid some of it off, and the gift covered what was left, with a little left over.

“They had no way of knowing that,” she said. “I mean, that’s God.”

“I was like, ‘There’s no way. There’s just no way,’” Petrozelli said.

Since then, word of The Bakery has spread throughout the community, and at Liberty in particular.

“The next week, we went back and there were like four other dorms that had already been (to the shop),” said McClure.

And sometimes groups, though not as large as the original contingent, still make a night of doughnuts, coffee and conversation with VanDusen.

But more than making a profit, VanDusen said she operates The Bakery as a mission.

“God sent my parents, in their old age, to Africa to be missionaries,” she said, “and he sent me to a doughnut shop in Lynchburg to be a missionary.”

And though she’s considered putting The Bakery up for sale, VanDusen said she feels her place, for now, is right where it has been since she bought the shop.

“We are to follow to the last drop, if it takes everything we have,” she said.

“I’m full tilt, I’m going to do everything I possibly can to His honor and glory, and leave the rest in his hands.”