Eastside Heritage Center’s oral history collection contains almost 200 interviews. In the following excerpt from his oral history (edited for clarity) Paul Vander Hoek describes the early activities of Bellevue’s Chamber of Commerce.
Interviewer: Tell me about the Chamber of Commerce back then. When was the first chamber organized?
Paul Vander Hoek: Well, I came back to Bellevue in 1946, and one of the first things I did was to start trying to get a Chamber of Commerce organized. And finally, Meta Burrows, the druggist, and then Harry Grant, the other druggist who was up on the corner of Eighth and 104th and myself, we put together the Chamber of Commerce.
And we took over the old Bellevue Businessman’s Club, which was almost a defunct operation at that time. But they owned what became the Bellevue Boys Club. And we in the Chamber of Commerce were given that building.
And one of the things that really upset me, was after I got less active in the Chamber of Commerce, they sold that building. And you can imagine what a nice spot it would have been for a Chamber of Commerce all the way through till today.
Harry Grant was the first person in the chamber. And I was on the board, and I think I served on the board for 15 or 20 years. And then I got off the board as the community got more oriented to Seattle business, and to the banks and to the government and cities.
This was the early stages of becoming a business community. The chamber was a very active factor. They’d had a manager by the name of Boddy, can’t remember her first name. Sam Boddy was her husband. But she was a goer and we put on a lot of activities. We even – the chamber helped, but we had a contractors’ association, builders and suppliers – and we even built a house in the Square and put on a home show.
That was a big project. Owen Williams was the architect. Bob McCormick was really the contractor in charge. That’s before he went to work for the city as a city engineer. But we had a bunch of people that did a lot of work to develop it. The biggest industry in Bellevue was homebuilding.
Heritage Corner is a feature in the Bellevue Reporter. Material is provided by the Eastside Heritage Center. For more information call 425-450-1049.
