Do you know how many hundreds of businesses are located in our community – in the Lakewood Shopping Center, the Skillman-Live Oak Center, the Wilshire Center, in Hillside Village, the Mockingbird Commons, the Medallion Center, the Casa Linda Plaza and the many other shopping locations that go as far north as Park Lane?

With all these, and a wide variety of services and products offered by owners and hard-working employees, you should find almost anything you need in our neighborhood.

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But do you take advantage of these businesses and patronize them? You should.

You can buy almost anything from large stores such as Tom Thumb, Minyard’s and Sam’s Wholesale Club to the small, individually owned and operated businesses. The 1993-1994 issue of “The Lakewood Community Directory,” published by the Lakewood Chamber of Commerce, lists about 70 different classifications of businesses and services in its yellow pages. The Chamber membership does not include every merchant or business, but we are working in that direction.

Customer service is important to all merchants and business people, and this is a goal of our community. When my husband and I owned and operated an art and custom framing shop, we knew that our customers could get the same work done in many places.

We also knew that our business would thrive on personal services to please our customers. Personal service is not common in many large, de-personalized stores in big shopping malls.

For example, our merchants will have your groceries carried to your car, order a special book or fabric, have your prescription delivered, call you when certain merchandise comes in – and, yes, they will learn to call you by name. How nice that sounds!

Parking is usually near the store when you shop; in fact, many people only walk a few steps to the door of a neighborhood shop. You can drive from the grocery store to the post office to your bank – and there are many of them to serve you – to the branch library, to the drug store, to the dentist and to a restaurant for lunch or dinner.

Restaurants of almost every kind abound in our area, Tex-Mex, Italian, Cuban, Chinese and on and on. If you do this, you haven’t walked as you might do in a mall.

You can save your energy to walk in your own neighborhood and visit with your neighbors or go to White Rock Lake and enjoy the beauty of nature at its best.

Our neighborhood has the ambiance of a small town in this huge Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. You may not know that before the turn of the century, the town of East Dallas was an incorporated city separate from the City of Dallas, with its own mayor and other public officials.

The town of East Dallas enjoyed a great deal of pride and respect for many years. This sense of pride still persists. And it will continue as long as the residents support the entire area – from our homes and neighborhoods to our businesses.

One of the goals of the Lakewood Chamber of Commerce is to provide an opportunity for its members to network with each other, to help establish the services and offer the products that will please customers, attract business and help make a profit.

Your patronage is necessary if we are to succeed and to have the products and services you want.