Ode to Bobby Dennis of Round Hill Auto Service Center

There’s nothing like living in a small town. Everybody knows everybody. And everybody in Round Hill knows Bobby Dennis, who owns the Round Hill Service Center.  He just retired after 42 years of helping people with their cars. Now that’s a testament to great man and great customer service.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Round Hill where I moved, newly married, and started a family in 1991. Bobby started his business way before that, 1980, to be exact, at the Round Hill Gulf Station, which became the Chevron Station then the Amoco Station.  That’s the gas station on the corner of Main (719 north) and Loudoun Street, right next to Tammy’s Diner.  He rented it for 28 ½ years. It was a hard business.

Back then, Bobby explained, it was harder because you would have to pay for the gas up front.  Then you’d collect the 3 cent or so margin to pay yourself back. A big investment for a small return. After 28 years Bobby says he finally “had the sense to quit and start my own auto service center.” He had the opportunity to buy the building across from the gas station from Mr. Harper.

Bobby says, “I think people had that in the mind that a gas station was just a gas station – not a garage” Bobby says, “But when we moved over here [the auto service business] just snowballed… it just took off. I wish I had done that a little bit sooner because it’s just hard to make money on gas.”

Bobby always loved fixing things. He was raised a farm boy in West Virginia until the family moved to Williams Gap Road when he was six. “My dad worked up in Mount Weather when they were digging those mines (bunkers) he worked up there in the mines and then he would come home on Fridays until he found a house for us to live.”  Around Christmas of 1959 their house burned down when an electrical panel started a fire and they lost everything.

His dad eventually bought 3 acres from a farmer named Jones and built a house. Bobbie worked on farm with the Joneses where they taught him to work on tractors.  He thought it was “pretty neat stuff”.  They would go down to Whitmore and Arnold (now Browning Equipment in Purcellville) and buy spark plugs or belts or whatever was needed for the tractors. Then down to Bridge Street in Round Hill to Loudoun Machine Works, where he worked on farm equipment, lawnmowers, chainsaws, etc.

In the midst of our conversation, a customer comes in:

Bobbie: Hey Sonny!
Sonny:  I just came in to say goodbye to you.
Bobby:  Well, it’s not a goodbye, it’s a see ya later!
Sonny:  You’ve been real nice to me – I tell ya.
Bobby:   I'm not getting out of here yet so don’t be surprised to see my truck pull up in front of your house one day.
Sonny:  That’s for sure and that’s all right too.
Bobby:   We’ll set on the front porch and visit for a while
Sonny:   When do you leave?
Bobby:  I gotta be out by the end of June so I gotta get all this stuff out of here by the end of June.
Sonny:  We’ll you’ve got a job there.
Bobby:   Yes sir! 40 years you gather up a lot of stuff.
Sonny:  A lot of things you didn’t need probably.
Bobby:   Yeah, you're right ya know…I'm a hoarder and I say to myself, I might need that one day!  Well Sonny, I sure appreciate working for you.
Sonny: I sure appreciate you doing me all those favors you did. We’ll think about you lot.
Bobby:  All right. Take care alright? Tell the missus I said hey.
Sonny:  And say hi to your wife. I haven’t seen her for a long time.

Sonny leaves.  We get interrupted numerous times for conversations just like this from folks that he has been working with.

“That fellow is 90. Oldest living resident in Bluemont.” Bobby says, “I’ve known him since I was a kid”.
I told Bobby I thought western Loudoun has a higher ratio of honest service centers than the rest of Loudoun. He agreed, “I hate people who upsell work.  We had a guy come in here one time with a list of services he was told he needed done at 40,000 miles and they wanted a couple hundred dollars to do it. Now I can pull up the service recommendations and see that the recommended the mileage for that service is 70,000 miles. But he don’t know…he’s never even looked at the manual to see what to do. I could just do the work but I tell him he don’t need it yet”.

A young lady who called her Dad crying because an auto center (national chain) told her the car wasn’t safe to drive. That she shouldn’t leave without getting it fixed as she was endangering her life.  She was scared.  Her dad picked her up, mad as a hatter, and brought the car to Bobby who fixed a couple of things on it for a lot less money.

So what are Bobby and his wife going to do now that they are both retired? “We're going down to Pigeon Forge, Bobby says, “And I’ve always wanted to go to Vermont.  So I’m going to go when the leaves start turning.  Then maybe go to Florida in the Winter - on the gulf side. We have some friends that are snowbirds and we’ll stay with them too. I want to travel and see more. I’ll probably find a part time job somewhere. Wal Mart or something!!!”.

Bobby has lung cancer but he’s had radiation and chemo and is doing remarkably well. Bobby says the Doc in Winchester gave him 2.5 years. But now since this is shrinking the cancer and he’s doing so well - chemo is once a month for a year. “The Doc told me the way you’re doing you might die of a heart attack before you die of cancer!”

Bobby is a Round Hill institution and the community will miss him. Bobby remarks, “Back in the day everybody knew everybody.  It used to be when you turned off 7 you knew who lived in every single house.  When I opened the gas station, I would be out at the gas pump and everybody would blow their horn and I’d would stand there and wave ‘cause everybody knew everybody.”

The new owners of the building live in Round Hill and are give the building a refresh and import antiques from France.

“She’s a real nice lady so I don’t mind that much. I love that she wants to do antique furniture in an antique building.”

Thanks, Bobby, for being a part of what makes Loudoun a great place.