Tom Porter didn’t just collect antiques; he collected stories. So says Carolyn Porter of her late husband and business partner. Even after the couple retired to Upper Arlington in 2004 and sold their remaining share of Garth’s Auction House in 2006, Tom Porter regularly came back to Delaware to consult in antiques.

“Everybody wanted to talk to him not just about their collections, but their old stories,” Carolyn Porter said.

Tom Porter passed away Saturday at Mt. Carmel West Hospital in Columbus due to complications of lung cancer. He was 75.

A memorial service will be held from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. this Saturday, Jan. 9 at Rodman Neeper Funeral Home, 1510 W. William St. Delaware. The family has requested contributions in Porter’s memory be made to the Delaware County Historical Society or the Grady Hospital hospice.

Carolyn Porter said her husband was a great storyteller, and that she expects people will re-spin some of his yarns on Saturday.

“He will thoroughly enjoy hearing those stories come back to him,” she said.

Porter was an active member of the community, having sat on the Delaware County Bank, Grady Memorial Hospital, the Delaware County Historical Society and Delaware County Cultural Arts Center boards. He was also a U.S. Army and National Guard veteran. But he is best known to Delaware as a longtime proprietor behind Garth’s, which sits at the intersections of U.S. 23S and Ohio 315, commonly referred to as the “gateway” into the city.

Original owner Garth Oberlander opened Garth’s in 1954. Oberlander mentored the Porters before selling them the business in 1967. After assuming ownership, the Porters continued its reputation of worldwide renown and expanded the business.

According to a 1981 Gazette article, they first began to buy antiques while stationed at Fort Meade, Md. to furnish their apartment on a limited budget.

“We started haunting antique shops,” Mr. Porter said in the article. “Within 18 months we bought enough furniture to furnish an apartment.”

The Porter family opened another auction house in Cincinnati, but that location has since closed.

The Porters turned over operations of Garth’s to Amelia and Jeff Jeffers in the mid-1990s, before selling the business to them outright in January 2006, although the Porters retained ownership of the property.

Jeff Jeffers said Monday he considered the Porters more parents and mentors than business associates. He keeps in touch with them, and saw Tom Porter about once a week. Porter “always had a smile on his face,” Jeffers said.

He first met the Porters when, as a business student at the Ohio State University in 1991, he painted the brick house on the property. He was lined up to be a franchisee for a chain restaurant, but instead the Porters asked him to work with them and eventually take over.

Jeffers said the things he learned from Porter went beyond “the stuff” of antiques — he also learned about talking to and relating to people in the antiques world.

“He was a guy who had some wonderful, very positive perspectives on a lot of different things,” he said.

Tom Porter recently made news when he, along with a developer, applied to the Delaware city planning commission to re-develop the land Garth’s sits on. Under the plan, the Porters would eventually sell the land to the developer.

The Jeffers are currently in talks to re-locate the Garth’s business, and preliminary plans were revised to preserve the historic barn and house on the property and donate them to the Delaware County Historical Society.

atobias@delgazette.com