Many of us can remember back a few years when we would enter Marting’s Department Store on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. What a wonderful sight greeted us: The store was brightly lit. All the beautiful Christmas decorations which had been carefully put up over the previous weeks were alive with lights at last! Christmas music was playing in the background. That day, everything at Marting’s was ready for what was traditionally the largest single shopping day of the year.

How can anyone forget that glorious experience? Thanksgiving week-end at Marting’s was always special in a number of ways. Christmas decorations were shining brightly. Departments were well stocked with merchandise and looked very inviting. The island show window on Chillicothe Street glowed with the life-size figures of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Wise Men and animals. In Gift Wrap, hundreds of bows in all colors had been measured out, punched and tied, and were waiting to be peeled open and put on wrapped packages. And customers streamed in by the thousands – young people home from college, relatives back home to share the holiday with families. Grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, cousins. It was like “old-home week,” a great family reunion right in the store, and everyone loved it.

For 130 years, The Marting Brothers Company occupied a prominent place in the life of Portsmouth, Southern Ohio and Northern Kentucky. Like countless other family department stores across America, Marting’s carried on a proud tradition of serving the shopping needs of the customers in our community with quality merchandise and friendly, personal service. It may seem strange now, but back then we took all that for granted. It was just the way the store did business. At the end of the day when employees left the store, perhaps they felt a bit tired, but they also knew they had served their customers proudly and well, and they had fun doing it! The kind of shopping experience they provided was special. Each employee felt a real sense of pride in knowing they were part of a great family of Associates who helped keep that experience alive for so many years, and who helped make Marting’s “One of Ohio’s Good Stores.”

David Horr retired from Marting’s in 1994 after serving for 31 years, first as controller, then secretary-treasurer, president, and finally chairman of the Board of Directors. A native of Portsmouth, he was the last family member to head the company, founded by his great-great-grandfather Henry Marting in 1872. He now resides in Tucson, Ariz.