After 65 years in the community, a Chatham bookstore is saying goodbye.
Gospel Text Bookstore will close its doors on June 30. The store, which is located at 56 Grand Ave. E in Chatham, offers books, Bibles, music, and gifts.
Helen Schwandt, one of the managers, calls the store's closing the "end of an era."
"The times have changed, as our customers' buying habits have," she says. "It's just the end of an era of a Christian bookstore in the community."
It will be a bittersweet goodbye for Schwandt, who has grown close to the store's customers.
Gospel Text Bookstore in Chatham. April 3, 2018. (Photo by Sarah Cowan Blackburn News Chatham-Kent).
"We have certainly had a lot of customers [who] have become friends and so we will miss that as we've had this journey together," says Schwandt. "We will also miss our customers [who] have become friends to us."
Schwandt says as the word gets out that the store is closing, many customers have reached out to share their memories.
"We've received notes of [what] the store has meant to them over the years from Facebook, and emails, and just person to person about their memories of the store -- coming with their grandparents or coming with their parents," she says. "They've also come in to get things for their children."
According to Schwandt, the Gospel Text Bookstore is a non-profit organization. She says once the store is closed, any money left over will go to a ministry called Gospel Text Mission, which puts up scripture signs across Canada.
She says the motto of the store since 1953 has been "Holding forth the word of life."