________________________________________________________Marti Gorman: The Most Amazing RePat
She was making some changes in her life. Moving on, post-divorce, leaving what had been home for many years in Boulder, Colorado, planning to transplant herself in Baltimore where a new job awaited. Surprisingly, her daughter chose to enroll at Canisius College. That gave Marti an excuse to come back home and help her daughter get settled. And then the start date of the new job was pushed back. And Marti met Newell Nusbaumer, who told her about the original Buffalo Old Home Week, and that was all it took.
For Marti Gorman, the whole concept of Old Home Week became her life, her mission, her identity. Now Marti personifies the Buffalo she has returned to, the Buffalo she is helping rebuild, and the Buffalo no one yet sees, except Marti, in her imagination.
So it was Old Home Week, adopted by Ms. Gorman as if it were her own orphan child, transformed, modernized, rebranded by her into Buffalo Homecoming, and it's little sister, Niagara Homecoming. And then the next opportunity: When she heard that Canisius College Press was going to be shut down by the college, she bought half of it. Having earned a very good living for a very long time as a free lance writer, Marti joined the man who'd been running the Press and together they took it over, preserving the the publisher's catalog, and putting out new books.
Rebranded as Buffalo Heritage Unlimited, Marti has dedicated the company to creating beautiful books about Buffalo, and books that make Buffalo beautiful. Until now they have not published fiction titles, but that is under consideration, as a change in partnership is underway and with it, a revision of the vision and mission for the company.
"I want to publish books about Buffalo, books that showcase Buffalo, and I can imagine publishing novels about Buffalo, as part of that mission," Gorman says.
In the meantime, she is doing everything she can to showcase Buffalo in a variety of ways. She has nearly singlehandedly created and improved Buffalo (and now also) Niagara Homecoming, Buffalo by Choice, and is currently working around the clock on a new venture, not yet ready for public disclosure, but within a few months will be announced as the latest and greatest in her quiver of arrows designed to channel her tremendous passion for all things Buffalo, and to direct that passion toward reaching out to ExPats and luring them back home.
Sharing a lunch or spending an afternoon with Marti Gorman leaves her companions defenseless against her highly contageous love for and belief in Buffalo, but more than a passive love of home, is her pasionate, unshakable determination to make Buffalo better, but by making it more of itself rather than doing a civic makeover. Her vision of making Buffalo more of itself is anchored in doing everything possible to make it a prime destination, first of all, for those who claim it as a point of departure. She wants to reverse the brain drain, to bring ExPats home to settle and reinvest, as they come home to raise their children in the places and in the values and environment in which they were raised, or to care for their parents in the places where their parents cared for them, not so long ago.
On our Nostalgia page, we've referenced the old "Boost Buffalo" campaign from our Boomer childhood. You could say that Marti Gorman is the new incarnation of "Boost Buffalo." In the lilting joy and optimism of her voice whenever she talks about her favorite topic, (which is most of the time and mostly what she talks about) you can almost hear the close harmony of that jingle in the background. "Boost Buffalo, it's good for you. Boost Buffalo, it's good for you,. Boost Buffalo, boost Buffalo, it's good--- for---- you!"