Page 45 - Lighting Magazine December 2019

The decade before the housing bubble burst, causing a massive Recession, was a great time for the lighting indus- try as the new construction market boomed. Robert Marash, who owned
Landmark Lighting — a manufacturer renowned for Tiffany looks among other popular styles — was well-known in the industry, having served on committees for the American Lighting Associa- tion (ALA) as well as the Dallas Market Center’s Lighting Board of Governors, plus maintained a permanent showroom in the Dallas Market Cen- ter for many years.
“The 2008 Recession put my back up against the wall [financially] and I was struggling,” Marash recounts. Based in New York, Landmark Lighting’s West Coast office was under the direction of two respected industry veterans, who suddenly had major medical crises to handle. “I knew I couldn’t handle things there on my own and began to drink my problems away,” he comments. Marash put to- gether a plan to bring Landmark’s operations back to the East Coast and approached Mark Fludgate and Brad Smith, the top executives at ELK head- quartered in Pennsylvania, to see if there was a possibility of renting storage space in their ware- house for Landmark’s inventory while he figured out his next move. When the suggestion to merge was proposed, he readily agreed.
While his financial situation improved with ELK’s acquisition of Landmark, Marash was surprised to find himself at loose ends without the daily hands- on interaction of managing a company. Over the next four years, that boredom led to drinking al- cohol more frequently and earlier in the day as time went on.
“Alcoholism affects you three ways,” Marash says, evoking Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) teach- ings: Spiritually, Physically, and Mentally. While the rest of the lighting industry was unaware of what was happening, Marash’s family members and business associates couldn’t help but notice and become alarmed. Then there were two legal charges of driving while intoxicated. “Hitting my bottom was when my accountant called to go over the previous year’s taxes that I hadn’t even filed,” he confides. Raised Catholic, Marash looked up into the air and said to God, “Tell me what to do.”
The answer, he says, came swiftly: Go to rehab. “Something told me this might be the only way out,” he affirms.
A PERVASIVE PROBLEM
☞ 1outofevery3Americansareaffectedbyalcoholismin one way or another.
☞ Alcoholismaffectspeoplefromallwalksoflife.
☞ Alcoholabuseisoneofthenation’smostpreventable causes of death, second only to tobacco and a poor diet/sedentary lifestyle.
☞ AccordingtotheCentersforDiseaseControl(CDC), more than 88,000 people in the U.S. die from alcohol- related deaths each year.
It was during that voluntary 30-day stay at Graymoor, a Franciscan Friars-based addiction treatment and recovery community in nearby Westchester, that Marash was introduced to the tenets of AA. There were no second thoughts. “I did everything they said to do,” he recounts. After his stay, Marash attended 80 AA meetings within 90 days, often going mornings and nights. “I’m an over-achiever,” he jokes. “I was one of the lucky ones who stuck it out and didn’t relapse.”
Just because he was able to adhere to the pro- gram, through dogged determination, does not mean there weren’t challenges. “It was three years before my wife and children would speak freely to me again,” he admits. Close relationships such as those with his wife, his parents, and business part- ners were strained to say the least...but all slowly proved to be repairable.
Robert Marash of Innovations Lighting (top) is appreciative of the hard work from friends Ramiro Carpio and Greg Mazza.
DeceMber 2019 | enLIGHTenment Magazine 41