Our Hometown
Nashua | Fortin Gage Flowers and Gifts
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Fortin / Gage Flowers and Gifts, Nashua's oldest Flower Shop.
Fortin / Gage Flowers and Gifts, Nashua's oldest Flower Shop, takes a new direction after, but keeps all that the town loves about this iconic business.
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Our Hometown is a local public television program presented by NHPBS
Our Hometown
Nashua | Fortin Gage Flowers and Gifts
Clip | 4m 22sVideo has Closed Captions
Fortin / Gage Flowers and Gifts, Nashua's oldest Flower Shop, takes a new direction after, but keeps all that the town loves about this iconic business.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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The business was started by Charlie Fortin in 1931, and my dad started working for him in 59, the year I was born.
So literally, I tell people I've worked there my entire life.
Charlie passed away in the early sixties and my dad bought the business from Aunt Peggy.
She wasn't really an aunt, but anybody that knit you sweat is when you're a child like that, I suppose you call them an aunt and then he expanded the store and then eventually bought the building and expanded it a little bit more.
So we're now.
Nash was the oldest flower shop.
To be honest, as I was growing up, I always worked in it, like I said, with my grandfather.
And then when I was old enough, you know, in high school, I needed a part time job, you know, during the summer, I'd work there sweeping the floors, doing whatever I could do.
I always helped out on holidays when I came home from college and stuff like that.
It was fun, but I never wanted to work there because I saw how hard my dad had to work.
And I was thinking like, There's no way I want to do that, you know?
I mean, it's fun to do, but it's not, you know, I mean, you know, the whole month from Thanksgiving to through Christmas, you didn't see my dad because he would leave in the morning before we even went to school.
And he wouldn't come home till after we went to bed a lot of times.
So it was you know, it was tough.
But as I got older and, you know, when I was graduating from college, I had met someone that we were talking about getting married and stuff.
And I said, Well, I suppose being part of a family tradition, a business that's successful, can't be that bad.
So I went into the business and I worked about seven, eight years in there and my dad would send me off to the floral seminars for the young owner managers and things like that.
And I'd come back with my head full of these ideas and it would always be like, We don't do things that way.
We don't do things that way.
So it was just a little tough.
You know, you didn't see the end of the the light at the end of the tunnel for a while.
So I ended up leaving for about seven or eight years again, you know, did a lot of other things.
But then when my dad was getting a little closer to the years of retirement, I mean, I still even and when I went away, I'd still help out on holidays and things like that.
I always had a connection to the shop and so when when he was getting a little closer to retirement age, I, I went back in and I, you know, said, hey, you know, let's make this work.
I am the new owner of Fortin Gage Flowers & Gifts and we are keeping the name the same.
It's a 91 year old flower and gift shop.
And I get to continue to bring that ritual and tradition of flowers and how they're a part of our lives from cradle to grave and deepen our community ties even more than it has been.
So if you think about the occasions that we give flowers or send flowers, it is cradle, you know, birth all the way through your marriage, your congratulations, your good days, your bad days, all the way through to our final resting place.
Right.
So over the 91 years Fortin Gage has had the honor, the pleasure and the responsibility of being a part of families lives from cradle to grave.
And it's it's an honor to get to view those pieces of humans lives that are so intimate that you don't get to necessarily see from the outside.
You know, they're happening, but you don't get to be a part of it.
So we see the excitement of someone who is about to ask their significant other for marriage, for their hand in marriage and I can't tell you we get so excited as if we're the ones being asked, you know, to the new baby that was born, to somebody's secret admire.
It's just it's incredible.
And most recently, sending flowers for somebody's 70th year of marriage, being married for 70 years is incredible.
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