Mary Foulis Holme, a longtime manager of Sarkisian’s Oriental Rugs, died Sunday in Seattle. She was 94.
Services will be held later in both Denver and Seattle.
Described by owner Greg Sarkisian as “absolutely elegant,” Holme was also a “no-nonsense person.”
“She fired me when I was a teenager,” said Sarkisian, whose father founded the store, at 693 E. Speer Blvd.
Sarkisian had a job washing rugs and received a nickel a square foot, while the charge to customers was 15 cents.
Sarkisian complained to Holme, and she fired him. When Sarkisian’s father, Harold Medill Sarkisian, learned what had happened, he told his son “to cut out the nonsense and do what Mary tells you.”
The younger Sarkisian was reinstated within a few months.
Holme, a divorced mother of three with no background in business, got a job at Sarkisian’s in the early 1960s and stayed almost 30 years.
“She was my dad’s right-hand man and a liberated woman before women’s liberation became popular,” Sarkisian said.
Holme “had an interesting eye for design and good taste,” said her son, Terry Holme, of Seattle.
Sarkisian sent her to many countries to buy rugs and antiques, Terry Holme said.
Sometimes she created designs and had the rugs made in Taiwan, said her daughter Molly Holme Barrett, of South Portland, Maine.
“Sarky,” as the elder Sarkisian was called, came to trust Holme’s taste, business acumen and approach to dealing with customers.
Once, a customer wanted to buy a $100,000 oriental rug, saying he hoped it would “impress the hell out of my friends.”
Holme shot back, “You don’t deserve to own this rug. It’s no longer for sale,” and she refused to make the sale.
“My dad didn’t know whether to laugh or cry,” Sarkisian said.
Holme’s children also knew “when we’d screwed up,” said her daughter Sally Megeath, of Lander, Wyo.
Holme once told her daughter Molly “that makeup you’re using isn’t producing the desired effect.”
Dedicated to beautiful neighborhoods, Holme circulated petitions on neighborhood issues and would call city leaders.
Mary Foulis was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on Jan. 22, 1914, and came to the U.S. with her widowed mother, brother and sister in 1922. They moved to Denver because they had friends here.
She graduated from East High School and did some modeling. In 1938 she married James S. Holme. They later divorced.
In addition to her children, Holme is survived by seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
