From her office window on the lower level of Texas Community Bank (formerly First Lakewood National Bank), Eloise Sherman can see part of the “bypass” section of Abrams Road.

While the view is not exactly scenic, it serves as a constant reminder of how a small group of committed people can achieve a major goal and help shape the direction of an entire community.

Sign up for our newsletter

* indicates required

The agreement between business owners and the City that led to the rerouting of Abrams Road when the thoroughfare was widened in the 1980s saved Lakewood Shopping Center, says Sherman, president of the Lakewood Chamber of Commerce.

But more than that, it was the impetus for an award-winning redesign of the aging business district that not only preserved the small-town charm but added landscaping, parking and modern amenities that helped attract new businesses and customers.

“The award the Lakewood Chamber of Commerce received in 1992 from the City of Dallas Urban Design Committee is one of the things I’m most proud of,” Sherman says.

The eight-year-old chamber of commerce (with about 200 members) actually is an expanded successor to the Lakewood-Skillman Business Association (membership about 40), which began in the 1940s.

Today, Sherman manages a group that focuses on the needs of businesses and communities ranging from as far north as Old Town and Medallion shopping centers to as far south as areas near R.L. Thornton Freeway.

Besides providing support to business people, the Lakewood Chamber also represents the area’s interests to City government and keeps an eye on community concerns.

“Without Eloise, there would be no Lakewood Chamber of Commerce,” says Rick Bentley, the chamber’s immediate past chairman of the board and a vice president at Swiss Avenue Bank.

“She’s been the driving force behind that organization since its inception.”

Bentley has known Sherman since they were neighbors in the early 1950s and first worked with her when he was a 10-year-old Boy Scout and she was a mom supervising a Cub Scout troop.

“She’s got more energy than anyone I know,” he says.

A Lakewood resident since the early 1920s, Sherman has seen the area undergo many changes. In the early 1980s, three concerns that captured her attention were the needs of the Lakewood Branch of the Dallas Public Library, the impending loss of many of the neighborhood’s remaining “original” residents, and the City’s growing illiteracy problem.

Through the founding of a group called Lakewood Library Friends, Sherman and other volunteers were able to address those needs.

The Friends’ oral history project preserved the memories of the area’s oldest residents and eventually resulted in a book called “Reminiscences: A Glimpse of Old East Dallas.”

Sherman and the Friends’ next project was helping the Dallas Public Library start a literacy program at the Lakewood branch to teach illiterate adults to read.

That program soon became the first Literacy Volunteers of America affiliate in Texas and grew from a handful of volunteer tutors and students at Lakewood in the mid-1980s to more than 400 pairs of tutors and students throughout the city, Sherman says.

Sherman went on to hold local, state and national offices in Literacy Volunteers of America. She received the 1989 President’s Award from Friends if Libraries U.S.A. Two years ago, she became the inspiration for a statewide award given annually to an outstanding Texas literacy volunteer.

“I thought it was the most wonderful thing that anyone could do for me,” Sherman says of the endowment for the Eloise Sherman Literacy Volunteer Award created by family and friends in 1991.

Although she is less involved with the literacy program today, Sherman continues to work on library concerns as chairman of the City’s Municipal Library Board, to which she was appointed by the mayor.

“Eloise has a sense of the City and what she wants for the City, and the library is a part of that,” says Lillian Bradshaw, retired director of the Dallas Public Library system and a member of the municipal board.

“She always wants the best for the library and for the citizens the library serves.”