The St. Mary’s County Chamber of Commerce has been helping local businesses for the past 50 years and it hopes to continue that assistance for at least the next 50.
The chamber will celebrate its five decades of service with an anniversary gala on March 8.
“It’s fantastic that the chamber 50 years ago really got the business community together and have made all kinds of strides over all these decades,” St. Mary’s Chamber of Commerce President/CEO Christine Bergmark said. “And here we are 50 years later and still active and thriving.”
It all started in 1974 with a meeting of 200 people and seven goals in the back corner of Bambino’s Pizza in Lexington Park.
“We hope that eventually people won’t go into a place that doesn’t have a Chamber of Commerce sticker on the window,” Chamber Executive Director Nick Smith said in a 1974 news article. “That will be the consumer’s protection, and it will be to the members’ benefit.”
The chamber began with 47 charter members, including the Maryland Tobacco Grower’s Association, Happyland Club and Raley’s Showroom Warehouse.
Smith, who died in 2020, was a U.S. Navy test pilot who fell in love with the county while flying over it, and two members of his family followed him to the chamber.
“When he retired he saw a need to help all the businesses in Lexington Park together for all the people that decided to work here and stay here and retire here and open their businesses,” said Smith’s daughter and Chamber Ambassador Chair Ann Lewis. “When you get that influx of people who live on the base, you bring on new businesses such as car dealers, pharmacists, veterinarians and bankers and the chamber was just behind all that. You had Leonardtown people who I don’t think begrudged all of that because they saw the boon that was coming to the county and they were grateful and they all joined to make the county better. I’m very proud of him.”
“I’m proud to be following in my grandfather’s footsteps and my mom’s,” said Chamber Ambassador Jennifer Misner, who is Smith’s granddaughter and Lewis’ daughter, “so it’s an honor to be part of the chamber and keeping it alive and growing.”
Business-friendlyThe chamber currently has about 360 members. In its heyday there were around 500, but Bergmark said “COVID has taken a big hit on our small businesses.”
Bergmark added that business chambers are important for the strength of communities.
“Chambers are conveners of the local leaders,” Bergmark said. “They give the local leaders a voice collectively to address change, to empower development, to talk with government, to exchange ideas, to learn from each other.”
Misner added that without the chamber, “businesses wouldn’t be acknowledged, [the community] wouldn’t know businesses were opening and [businesses] wouldn’t have the partnerships with each other.”
But chamber ideas and that of businesses have been altered over the decades.
“Our culture has really changed,” said Ambassador Chair Carolyn Hoff, who spent 34 years at The Enterprise newspaper. “The way some businesses are doing things are different than what they would before. Who would have thought we’d have businesses where you could go and smoke a cigar?”
Hoff added that the support the chamber provides to businesses, especially locally-owned, is invaluable.
“The mom and pops really need to be able to be competitive with [the larger corporations],” said Hoff, who believes people are beginning to shop more at smaller stores. “If [consumers] can get their needs met here, they don’t have to go up the road. What we encourage, especially with networking, is that if the name of your business is out there the more business you’re going to get.”
In 1976, a county tourism information center was added to create a directory so new residents knew what businesses needed.
The chamber has a lengthy list of events it hosts, which includes networking, public forums, ribbon-cuttings and community events.
“As [legislative] bills and things come up that are of interest or concern to our community, we can be that voice for the community,” Bergmark said. “And small businesses, there are so many of them, we help them have a collective voice.
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