M. Lee Marston, long-time president of J.J. Haines & Co., Inc., passed on August 19 at the age of 92. Marston was born in Montclair, N.J. in 1933 but was raised in Charlottesville, Va., in his early life before making a permanent home in Maryland, located near the heart of the family business J.J. Haines.
Lee’s great grandfather, Capt. John James Haines, won $800 from Yankee prison guards in a poker game in Fort Delaware during the Civil War, sewed the money inside his belt and went on to open a wicker-ware store in Baltimore in 1874. Following his grandfather, Casper T. Marston, and uncle, John H. Marston, Lee was the fourth-generation president of the Haines floor covering wholesaling company from 1969 to 1988.
In 1993, he took over as chairman, until after 50 years in the flooring business, he retired as chairman of the board in 2001. His cousin, Mort Creech, continued running the company. J.J. Haines remained a family-owned business with many dedicated employees and customers from 1874 until 2019.
A legacy in the industry, Lee was known for having the “people touch” making everyone around him feel appreciated, whether an employee or a customer.
Lee was the first winner of the North American Association of Floor Covering Distributors (NAFCD) Lifetime Achievement Award to honor leadership in the industry. He held many other leadership roles for various flooring industry associations such as the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, the Mid Atlantic Floorcovering association and also local business boards such as YPO, Western Maryland College and charities such as the Boy Scouts of America (Lee was an Eagle scout himself), the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, Severna Park Community Center and Virginia Seminary.
Marston was devoted to his family and is survived by his wife of sixty-four years, Sylvia.