This is the concluding column of a five-part series about the 100-year-old business at the intersection of Highway 169 and S.E. 416th Street that many still refer to as Chambers Corner. The gas station and convenience store was founded by Bob Chambers Sr. and over the next 54 years operated by him and his son, whom we call Bob Jr. even though they didn’t share the same middle name. Theirs is a story of hard work, long hours, and a commitment to the customers they served. The business still operates today as Stop-N-Shop under the management of Nick and Serene Dhami who like the Chambers family live in the upstairs second-floor apartment.
In 1947, twenty years after moving from Canada to Washington, Bob Chambers Jr. purchased his father’s business and property. Bob Jr. was then 45, single, never married, and recently became a U.S. citizen. Over the next two years, Bob married Betty (Hubbell) Saari, and the couple became parents to identical twin boys, Robert and Richard. Three more babies followed, Marilyn, Eloise, and Bruce Chambers, plus two older children from Betty’s first marriage, Dale and Barbara Saari. The family of nine lived together and all pitched in by pumping gas, checking oil, cleaning windshields, and selling the large line of convenience products, 16 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Bob Chambers was one of the hardest-working men on the Enumclaw Plateau. For a time, Chambers rose at 3 a.m. to milk cows at a nearby 80-acre farm he managed. Then it was back to his filling station that opened at 6 a.m. The the store didn’t close until 10 p.m., so Bob paced himself with short naps throughout the day.
In his adjoining repair shop, Bob serviced vehicles and repaired machinery and equipment for local loggers and dairymen. As seen in this early 1960s photo, Bob wasn’t afraid of getting dirty. Wally DuChateau, an Enumclaw Courier-Herald columnist observed, “The guy always looked like he’d just climbed out of a grease trap.” For some his affectionate nickname was ‘greasy Bob.’
Bob had an entrepreneurial spirit and always sought new ways to make a buck. He built a brick outbuilding just off the kitchen where he started a laundromat with two coin-operated washers and dryers. He installed showers in the station’s public restrooms so skiers and loggers could clean up at the end of the day. He purchased two cabins from Mt. Rainier that he intended to rent, but instead periodically were used by part-time employees and relatives. A forward thinker, Bob outfitted his building with in-floor heating in the early 1950s.
Inside the home and store, Betty Jean both raised their seven children and supervised store operations. The Saari and Chambers kids typically started working, at about age 9 or 10. Between customers, everyone was kept busy sweeping floors and dusting shelves. Successive customers were served by a ‘next person up’ system. They were typically paid on a commission system early 3% of their gross sales. Marilyn, the oldest Chambers daughter remarked, “There was never a dull moment in the store.” Yet one product was absent from the Chambers Corner shelves – no beer, wine, or alcohol was sold because Betty didn’t want that type of customer.
Bob Chambers was diagnosed with cancer in 1972 at age 68, but he refused to really acknowledge it. His doctors had been wrong before, once when they wanted to remove his eye, which he healed with a home remedy, and again when they claimed he could never have children after an injury to his lower body. The cancer came back in 1979. That September Bob sold the business and property for $120,000 to Dennis and Judith Slagel. The Slagels operated it for a decade before selling in June 1989 to Nick and Serene Dhami for $232,500 on real estate contract that was paid off in November 1993.
Bob and Betty moved to Auburn where in 1981, he suffered a stroke. A year later Bob had a heart attack while painting his home. Robert Elmer ‘Bob’ Chambers died at age 79 on Feb. 19, 1984. But as his step-granddaughter, Penny (Reich) Harp wrote in conclusion to her May 31, 1984 biography, “He never gave up on life.” Betty Jean Chambers survived Bob by 26 years passing away on July 4, 2010, at 89.
Growing up in a home that was open as a store 16 hours every day, Marilyn (Chambers) Hoksbergen reflected on her upbringing, “I never realized how rich my life was until looking back at the experience of how we lived.”
Photo LP1025M comes courtesy of the Enumclaw Plateau Historical Museum located at 1837 Marion Street. This five-part series of columns is indebted to the Chambers family members, Robert, Richard, Marilyn, and Eloise; to Penny Harp, daughter of Peggy (Reich) Chambers, who wrote Bob Chambers’ biography as an 8th grade school project; Doug Walthers for his memories of working with Bob; genealogical research by Donna Brathovde, a Ravensdale historian; Courier-Herald articles by Joe Delmore (10-25-1979) and Wally DuChateau (2-7-1996); Puget Sound Regional Archives for 1939, 1950, and 1951 King County Assessor photos; and to Boomer Burnham, a Tahoma High School teacher doing business as: www.BoomersPhotography
