Weymouth appliance king George Washington Toma dies at 94

WEYMOUTH – Excitement lifts Betty Beecher’s voice as she remembers buying her first stovetop range from George Washington TV and Appliance 40 years ago.

“Until then, I had a small countertop," Beecher recalled. "This new stove had four burners and each one could do something different: melting butter, warming up, whatever you needed.

“From the time we moved to Weymouth in 1982, every appliance we bought came from Toma," she said. "Washer, dryer, wall oven, refrigerator, microwave. Our son Mark also bought from Toma when he married and lived in Braintree − it passed through the generations."

George Washington Toma, who founded the East Weymouth business in 1953, died May 19 at age 94.

The news brought back fond memories of a different era for Beecher, 99. She recalled running into Toma and his wife, Ginny, who died at age 88 in 2020, in a local store after he retired.

“He was very likable and always wore his George Washington Toma jacket," she said.

Toma died in a Milton hospice after a short illness. His son George Anthony Toma, who has run the business since his father retired in 1991, talked with his father during his final days.

"I always told him that I thought the harder you worked, the luckier you got and we are all very lucky," his son said.

A private service was held May 27 for family and close friends, including Valerie MacLeod, 80, of Weymouth, the first female employee Toma hired in 1983. She retired in 2020 because of the pandemic.

"I started in the office, and back then, he did everything, sales and service, and was excellent to work for," MacLeod said. "Every time he had a customer, he did what he could for them, like they were family, and that never changed.

"If someone called and said their stove had died the day before Thanksgiving, he would go out himself and if he couldn't fix it, he would have a new one delivered that day. When the Carmelite nuns in Roxbury needed an air conditioner on a very hot summer day, he made sure one was delivered."

MacLeod, who eventually became a manager, said staff were told to always ask customers how they heard of the store. That led to many "beautiful stories" of personal attention and service calls customers had received.

Toma himself, she said, reminded her of her own father, with a keen sense of humor, one-liners, and his point of view which he made sure to get across:

"There was so much brightness and even with sharpness, it was said well," she said.

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George Washington Toma was born Feb. 22, 1929, in Quincy. His parent had just emigrated from Italy and their son was named after the famous American president whose birthday he shared.

"His family had very little materially, yet they were rich with love for one another," George Anthony Toma said. "Family was, and is, everything. Dad was the baby of the family and learned that was what mattered most in life, as a result of growing up with very little. His parents, and older brothers and sisters, set the example for him and made sure he never went without."

Toma served in the U.S. Army, where he learned electronics and came home to work for a Weymouth electronics company hanging roof antennas even though he didn’t like heights. In 1953, Toma, who was 25 and had $800, and a friend started Weymouth TV, a repair shop in lower Jackson Square.

He enjoyed helping his customers, many of them older people. He met his wife at a dance at Moseley's in Dedham in 1950. They were married in 1956 and had three sons and a daughter.

Although he retired at age 62 in 1991, he continued to drop by the store, chatting with customers, sweeping the floor, consulting with his son. One of the store's most successful advertising campaigns played off his birthday: Every Feb. 22, there was a Presidents Day sale and Toma would dress up as the Founding Father in costume, tri-corner hat and wig, and give away cherry pies.

The cherry pie campaign drew the attention of Edith Martha Rothman, of Milton, who also had bought all her appliances there. In 2019, when Rothman was turning 100, she decided to have a centenarian caper over their birthday bond.

She sent Toma, who turned 90 the same day, a birthday card saying, "You're George Washington, I am Martha! We share the same birthday. I just want to let you know George and Martha are still around." He loved it. On their birthdays, his son George Anthony Toma took his father to Rothman's home in Milton.

She was waiting and called out, "Are you George Washington?"

"The last time I looked," he said, walking into her kitchen, and added, "You've been kissed by George Washington." They reminisced and joked about aging.

"You look better than I do," he said.

"It took me two hours to make me look like this," she said.

"We started on him yesterday," Toma's son joked back.

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Toma framed her card and kept it on the wall in his kitchen next to the chair he sat at every morning. After more than 50 years on Broad Street in Weymouth, he moved to a retirement community in Rockland after his wife died and the framed card went with him.

"He treated everyone he met as if they were family, continuing the lessons he absorbed growing up," his son said. "Dad believed that if he took care of people, they would take care of him, and this became the foundation upon which he built George Washington Toma TV and Appliance."

The business celebrated its 70th anniversary this year.

"He set the example for all of us by taking care of people, always putting principles ahead of profit, and what we now call 'paying it forward,' his son said. "He was way ahead of his time!"

Keeping a family together in a family business is no small feat. As his son said, "You can't have two bosses."

Asked about the biggest changes in the business, his son said color TV "changed everything for everyone. Dad grew up fixing tube TVs, carrying his big tube caddies around, and we would go in after school and test the tubes on his tube checker.

"When TVs went to solid state and modules, it changed the way we did business. Before, he would see customers one or two times a year to change a tube and he really got to know his customers and their kids. I think a service call was $5. The new electronics were much more reliable.

"We had everyone's history in a 3-by-5 card file. This worked, but the computers saved us so much time and made everyone's life better. Of course, my Dad hated to spend money and didn't like change, so this was not an easy thing for me to get him to go along with. ... I can still remember the hard time he gave me when I bought a cash register. We had a money box; why did we need that?"

When his son decided to open a second store, in Brockton, in 2008, Toma praised his initiative. Toma's daughter, Donna, now manages the Brockton store for his son.

Today George Anthony Toma, 65, speaks with the perspective of time.

"I got to work with my Dad for over 30 years and I don’t think I understood how lucky I was until now," he said. "He taught me so many things and even, on occasion, what not to do.

"Anyone who has grown up in a family business understands how difficult it can be. We shared many great times, but also many difficult and sometimes painful times and I wouldn’t trade a single one of them."

Toma taught his children to be proud of everything they did. He told them people are "judged by what we do and we should be proud to put our name on anything we do. "

In his later years, he looked back on the ways he had made a difference in people's lives.

" I can only hope that I can continue in his footsteps and make him proud," his son said.

In retirement, Toma became a hard-working volunteer for Meals on Wheels in Weymouth for about 10 years.

"He loved helping people in need and he knew many of these people had no family and needed somebody to talk to," George Anthony Toma said.

After his wife passed away, Toma missed her enormously. He kept busy and worked out in his home gym until he was 93. Getting out into the community helped.

"People would sing him our jingle and recognize him wherever he went," his son said.  "In his last few years, he would always wear a Toma shirt and he loved the fact that people knew who he was. And they would always share nice stories about how we took care of them."

Reach Sue Scheible at sscheible@patriotledger.com.

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This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: George Washington Toma, who founded Weymouth appliance store, dies