Sunday Obituary: Friendly Toutle store was Mr. Drew's life passion
Saturday, August 23, 2008 11:32 PM PDT
By Barbara LaBoe
Printable version
E-mail this articleEdwin “Bub” Drew loved family, the outdoors and the family store that’s employed four generations and is a community fixture in Toutle. So it’s hard for family and customers alike to believe he’s gone.
Bub not only worked at Drew’s Grocery & Service, he lived behind it. And even after his retirement he stopped by daily to check things out and lend a hand.
Bub was even talking to a sale rep about a soda order when he fell and hurt his hip. He died Aug. 4 just shy of his 91st birthday from complications from that injury.
“He was doing store stuff even then,” son Greg Drew said recently.
“This was a smaller community and he probably knew just about everybody,” said Drew, who took over the family business in the 1980s. “I don’t know that I ever heard him say no. If someone needed something he would do his best to help them out.”
“He was a little sweetie,” said longtime customer and former employee Peggy Huntington. “He was always good to people.”
“I worked a lot of jobs and had good bosses, but he was the best,” added Pat Meyers, who worked for Drew for 11 years.
Bub, who never went by his given name, was born Aug. 12, 1917, in Vader to Sidney and Eleanor (Quick) Drew. He graduated from Toutle Lake High School in 1937 and immediately started working in the store he opened with his mother.
The family store opened in 1937 as Gilmore’s Grocery. Bub’s mother, who had remarried, opened it with him as a way to support the family after the death of her second husband and Bub’s stepfather, whose last name was Gilmore. Also, Bub was too young to apply for a liquor license, Greg Drew said.
The store has varied through the years and at times was like an old fashioned mercantile with groceries, clothes and just about everything else that loggers and residents might need. For some years there was even a small tavern — a few booths — in one section. The store was renamed Drew’s Grocery in 1975.
“I realized later in life that he was just really driven to make sure that his family was cared for, that they had a home and the things that they needed,” Greg Drew said. He thinks that dates back to his father’s experiences in the Depression.
Bub’s father left the family in the mid 1920s when he was 8, and his mother “had it pretty rough” as she struggled to keep the family together, Greg Drew said. Bub’s stepfather died the year the family opened the store, leaving the children and his mother on their own again.
“So one of his focuses was to see that his family had a better life,” Greg Drew said. “And he was always there if we needed anything. Whether it was advice or even money or a place to live, it didn’t matter. There was never a no.”
Employees said Bub was the same with customers — even ones he didn’t know.
In tough times he allowed customers to buy food on credit. And once Meyers remembers Bub helped two young girls from Vancouver who got lost on Mount St. Helens and didn’t have money or gas to get home.
“None of us knew them but he let them call their dad and then said to give them gas to get home and I think he even gave them money to get some hamburgers,” Meyers said. “He just trusted people and he could tell they were scared. And they did mail him a check later.”
Greg Drew is comforted by the fact that his father lived a long and happy life and had time to enjoy his grandchildren in recent years as well as go camping, hunting and clamming. He married Norma Fiest in 1940 and she was the love of his life, family and friends said. She died in 2002.
In addition to Greg Drew, Bub and Norma had two daughters, Judy Varner of Toutle and Linda Rae Filla, who died of brain cancer. They also had nine grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren.
Bub’s granddaughter Julie Cox works in the store with her father, making her the fourth-generation in the business. And even though they know Bub is gone, he was such a part of the store that’s hard not to look for him each morning.
“I told one of the crew yesterday that it was weird, but I could swear I could still hear his cane tapping when he was coming in the door,” Greg Drew said. “And my daughter called the other day and said ‘It’s 10 o’clock and grandpa is not here yet.’ So it’s left a big void.”
KelsoLesbian wrote on Aug 24, 2008 8:54 AM:
CONCERENED wrote on Aug 24, 2008 11:14 AM:
Past Month's Most Commented Stories