Manteca Bulletin, CA
July 24 2005

No more pressing business

Bobson Cleaners closing after 79 years

Bobson Cleaners, one of Manteca’s oldest-running family-owned
business institutions, is closing its doors after serving the
community for nearly eight decades. Seventy-nine years to be exact.
“It was just time. I’ve been there for over 50 years; it’s a long
time,” said Vi Bobson who has been at the helm of Bobson Cleaners for
about as long as she and husband Ernie have been married.

The business will remain open until Aug. 24 to allow customers to
come and pick up their dry-cleaned items; however, they are not
accepting any more work orders.

Bobson Cleaners’ history goes back to 1926 when a young immigrant
from Armenia named Mihran Bobson moved to Manteca and opened a
tailoring shop on the block of West Yosemite Avenue where Yosemite
Cafe is located today. A master tailor, Mihran came to California via
Chicago where he had a brother. But he also had another brother in
San Francisco who moved there the year of the great 1906 earthquake,
and a sister living in Los Angeles, and eventually left the Windy
City and followed those two siblings to the Golden State.

Mihran settled in Fresno where he had three flourishing tailor shops
for a number of years before he decided to make the move to Manteca,
not for any particular reason except for the fact it was near the
coast.

As Vi Bobson explained it, “He liked the idea of only 60 miles away
from the coast.”

Manteca was just a small and newly incorporated city when Mihran
opened his tailoring shop on West Yosemite Avenue. In 1930, he
“developed” the dry-cleaning business, as his youngest son Ernie put
it.

Ernie came into the business in 1950 after he graduated from the
University of the Pacific, then College of the Pacific, in Stockton
where he majored in business on a sports scholarship. He played
football for four years. Before that, an older brother managed the
business.

In the last 50 years, Bobson Cleaners grew into one big operation.
“At one time, we had 21 locations up and down the valley. We went all
the way down to Merced. We had three or four in Modesto. We had six
plants in Stockton. We had shops all the way to Walnut Creek, Castro
Valley as well as in Escalon and Oakdale,” recalled Vi who took over
the management of the business while her husband worked in real
estate development, commuting to his office in Sacramento for 20
years.

Managing the family business was originally not in Vi’s plans. A
science major at the University of the Pacific, she had planned to
work at a laboratory, which she did briefly. She worked for Manteca
chemist, Dr. Claire Weast. She also worked in national advertising at
the Stockton Record.

But the family business simply fell on her lap. “We do what we have
to do, don’t we?” she simply stated.

Fifteen years ago, Bobson Cleaners took a quantum leap when the
Bobsons tore down the old plant on the corner of their property at
North Main and Edison Street. They built the new building farther
back from North Main Street complete with state-of-the-art,
computerized equipment. The Bobsons’ property used to be larger, but
they later sold part of the land to Bank of Stockton.

Vi Bobson recalled that when they built the new facility, she said
she’d give the business two more years and then retire, but somehow
those two years turned to 15 years, she recalled with a laugh.

While the business flourished for many years, the Bobsons said they
have had their ups and downs like any other in the industry.

“Dry cleaning won’t make you rich but it’s a good bread and butter.
It sent four children to college,” Vi Bobson pointed out.

The youngest of the Bobsons’ four children is Dr. Craig Bobson of
Manteca, a family practitioner. Son Rancy is an engineer in San
Mateo, and oldest son Mark is an appraiser in Linden. Only daughter
Nimi Thackerson, a Sacramento State University graduate and an
artist, gave up her career as a buyer for major store chains 20 years
ago to come and help her parents manage the business in Manteca. She
is now helping her parents go through the process of closing the
business.

Thackerson said the family was fortunate to have had employees who
were “a big part of why this business worked” and became a success.

“They took pride in their work. They really took care of our business
like it was their business. We were very fortunate with the team that
we had. We have lots of loyalty here,” said Thackerson of Bobsons’
employees, many of whom have been with the company for many years.

Her assistant manager, Frances Rivera, for example, had been with
them for 10 years.

“Fran has done a great job in customer service. Everybody just loved
her; she’s the best,” said Thackerson who calls her mother “the
matriarch of the business for 50 years.”

Through the years, they have also met wonderful people in the
community who patronized their business, the Bobsons said. One
particular customer that they singled out was Joan Kauffman.

“She’d bring all the girls baked treats every week. She’s been such a
great inspiration to them; she gave us lots of support as customer,”
Thackerson enthused.

But helping people look good in their business suits and former wear
was not the only thing that Bobson Cleaners has given to the
community.

“My parents are great people who have done so much for this
community. I really admire them. My mother is a real humanitarian and
a philanthropist,” Thackerson said of her parents who, together, have
been involved in many civic organizations and projects. Ernie was a
charter member of one of the Kiwanis clubs in Manteca and is still
active in SIRS in Stockton, a club of retired professionals. Vi, for
her part, has been a member of the Manteca Federated Club for nearly
as long as she has been involved in the business. She continues to
remain active in the club. Both husband and wife also are currently
active in the Symphony Comes to Manteca Committee.

While running the business has been hectic and time-consuming, the
Bobsons managed to squeeze in some down time to pursue their
individual hobbies. Both golfed at one time. Ernie still does, but
since Vi’s stroke six years ago, she has given up the hobby. She was
active with a golfing group at Spring Creek Golf Course in Ripon
where she still continues to meet with fellow Federated Women for a
game of bridge regularly.

Vi Bobson said retirement will definitely be just as busy for her.

“I have a lot of things I’m involved in,” she said, as well as many
hobbies. One of them is upholstery and gardening.

“I’m a plain dirt farmer. I love to garden. I spend most of my time
in the back yard,” she said.

As for her husband, she said, “his avocation has always been his
vocation.”

Before they can start pursuing their avocations though, at least for
Vi Bobson there’s still plenty of things to keep her busy for the
next two months.

“I still have to do the bookkeeping. I have to dissolve a
corporation. It’s a lot of work,” she said.