- Date Of Birth: September 21, 1928
- Date Of Death: August 25, 2018
- State: Ohio
Martha N. Moore, 89, an admired member of the Salem community, local entrepreneur, and beloved mother and grandmother, has died on August 25, 2018 at Hospice of the Valley in Poland, Ohio.
Martha Ellen Nichols Moore (Marty) was born on September 21, 1928, to John D. Nichols Sr., a businessman, and Frances Lillian Dunbar Nichols, an artist, in Shanghai, China where her father was posted with the Standard Oil Company. Due to political turmoil in China her family returned to the United States in 1931, and she spent her childhood and youth in New York City and the nearby suburbs of Scarsdale and Pelham Manor, New York, and Montclair, New Jersey, where she finished high school. She graduated with honors from Radcliffe College, majoring in history, and subsequently attended the Management Training Program, a joint program of Radcliffe and the Harvard Business School.
During her graduate study she met her future husband, Robert S. Moore of Salem, Ohio who was studying at HBS. They were married on June 7, 1952 at the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration in New York, better known as “The Little Church Around the Corner.” After living in several cities in the Northeast and Midwest, Mr. and Mrs. Moore settled in Salem, where in 1964 they founded the Moore Metals and Refractories Specialty Company, a manufacturing concern serving the steel foundry industry.
Mrs. Moore’s ability to balance her professional business training with a hands-on understanding of the manufacturing process, while fulfilling an unusually demanding role as wife and mother, inspired her family to refer to her as “The Magic Lady.” It was never at all clear how she managed to accomplish as much as she did. When time permitted she turned her energies to community service. During its active years she was an officer in the Traveler’s Club of Salem. Long an advocate of mental health causes, she served on the board of Columbiana County Mental Health and Recovery Services in Lisbon, and on the board of the Association for Children with Learning Disabilities (ACLD) in Youngstown. Mrs. Moore was also on the board of the Salem Community Theater. At the Episcopal Church of Our Savior in Salem she was a lay reader and a vestry member and later was appointed Senior Warden. A long-time member of the Salem Golf Club, Mrs. Moore became perhaps the first member to successfully drive a golf ball into the trunk of a tree and have it remain there, effectively inventing the “hole in one (tree).”
On her father’s side Mrs. Moore was a direct descendant of Susanna North Martin, one of sixteen innocent citizens of Salem, Massachusetts hanged for witchcraft in 1692. She was also descended from Ichabod Nichols Sr., a sea captain based in Salem, Massachusetts, and of three generations of Unitarian Ministers educated at Harvard College, beginning with Ichabod Nichols Jr. of the class of 1802. Mrs. Moore’s paternal grandmother was Minerva Parker Nichols, who was one of America’s first female architects and the first to practice without a male partner, and whose ancestors included John Wesley Parker, killed in the Civil War, and Deacon Seth Doane, who settled in Plymouth Massachusetts in 1630. Having developed a love for China during his business years, Mrs. Moore’s father John D. Nichols Sr. distinguished himself during World War II by participating in numerous flights over “the hump” from India to the Chinese interior, delivering medical supplies to both Nationalist and Communist forces.
On her mother’s side Mrs. Moore was descended from Captain Benjamin Berry of Brewster, Massachusetts, a sea captain during the Revolutionary War, and of early settlers in Clatsop County Oregon, where Mrs. Moore’s mother was born.
Mrs. Moore was preceded in death by her husband, Robert S. Moore of Salem. She is survived by her brother, John D. Nichols Jr. of Winnetka, Illinois, by her three sons, Benjamin B. Moore of New York City, Robert N. Moore of Salem, and Nathaniel B. Moore of Salem, and by her grandchildren Amanda E. Moore of Washington, D.C., and John Colin Moore of Shaker Heights, Ohio.
