By Ruth Ann Ruiz
The Post Newspaper Features Editor
Mary Chambers, Assistant City Manager for Nassau Bay, will be kicking up her heels as a participant in Dancing with the Stars for the Bay Area Alliance. “When my friend called me and asked if I’d participate, I said, ‘I don’t dance well, but I’ll do it,’” Chambers said.
She went on to explain the purpose of the Bay Area Alliance for youth and families is keeping drugs and alcohol away from teenagers. “This is something I feel very strongly about, so I said yeah I can do this,” she explained.
Though she can’t dance, she did have an early exposure to music and dancing in her childhood home. Chambers is the youngest of eight children. She lived with her siblings and parents in a house on The Refuge Plantation in Greenville Miss.
On Saturdays, she and her siblings went into town to purchase one LP record. Which record chosen for the entire family to enjoy had to be agreed upon by all the children. They were always in agreement that it was an artist from Motown but getting down to just one record took some negotiating.
Throughout the week the children would offer exchanges such as doing someone’s chores to help booster the vote for the record selection. Then the music became part of the family collection. “Our house was always full of music and dancing,” said Chambers.
The siblings’ negotiations and barter didn’t stop with the weekly record choice, it was a way of life for them. “My brothers knew I didn’t like ice cream, so they’d tell me you get your ice cream and give it to us, and we’ll give you our candy or cookie,” Chambers shared.
As a city administrator, Chambers has used her well honed win-win negotiation tactics to benefit the citizens of each community she has served over the course of her career.
Life on a plantation kept Chambers close to her extended family. “Most of us were cousins on the plantation,” said Chambers. She went on to explain “If a child got in trouble at someone’s house, then the child was in trouble with his or her own parents.”
Her mother worked as the nanny for the plantation owners, so Chambers and her siblings spent a lot of time in the owner’s home hanging out with their children.
When they weren’t at the owner’s house with extra children, their own home was overflowing with children. “My mom loved kids, so our house was where everyone would come hang out,” explained Chambers.
Chambers has one adult son and has been happily married for 28 years in September to her husband, Robert.
She and her husband live in Galveston County and enjoy a life filled with travel. “There is so much beauty to see in the US,” said Chambers. Plus, she does have a very large extended family to visit.
Attending college wasn’t a choice in her family home, it was a rule. Thus, Chambers secured an academic scholarship to attend Rust College where she majored in political science. She finished her degree in just three years.
After college she jumped into working on a political campaign in New Hampshire, where she was inspired to study urban planning.
Swinging back across the country, Chambers completed her master’s degree in urban planning at the University of Kansas. “I had a scholarship from Housing and Urban Development and to keep from paying back the funds, I worked for HUD in Lawrence for two years,” she said.
Her career then took her to Oklahoma and then back to Mississippi. At that point she said, “Texas started calling me.”
Her first position in Texas was city planner for Baytown. She has served in planning for Harris County, and was City Administrator in charge of operations for the City of Anahuac in Chambers County right after Hurricane Ike.
Then it was onto League City, where she served as Director of Planning and Development.
For Chambers, the most rewarding part of her work is working with people to solve their problems with the cities’ policies. The area of her career that she is extremely proud of is the award-winning comprehensive city plans developed under her leadership.
Chambers’ League City plan won national and state awards and her Baytown plan won state recognition. Right now, Nassau Bay is waiting to learn if the comprehensive plan she developed will receive a state award.
What was not in the plan was being invited to participate in Dancing with the Stars, but she is enjoying the experience, “My dance partner is a lot of fun, and we are having a good time at rehearsals,” said Chambers.
Her coworkers respect her work and her dancing challenge, “Mary is a fantastic co-worker, and we can’t wait to support her as she competes in “Dancing with the Stars,” said Csilla Ludanyi, finance director for Nassau Bay.
