About Marty

Marty is the youngest of 8 kids and grew up on a farm in Carthage, Maine, milking the cows before catching the school bus every day. His mom, Joann, who died in April, is the author of Keeping a Family Cow, one of the best known books for small farmers. The family still keeps Jersey cows (the brown ones with the black noses).

Here is a campaign profile of Marty in the Saco Bay News.

Marty went to Dirigo schools and then to Gould Academy in Bethel as a day student, and then to RPI for engineering school. After graduating he got a job at GE Plastics, and worked all over the US and in Austria, helping start up plants making composite decking, and still holds some patents for the process.

Realizing that back home in Maine was place he most wanted to be, but that there were not many jobs in Maine for chemical engineers, he decided to start his own composite decking company. He settled on Biddeford as the best location, signing a lease in the Biddeford Industrial Park in 1999, after meeting with economic development director Bob Dodge (a legend, for whom the Biddeford Industrial Park is now named).

Marty then moved to Biddeford, initially to the Mountain Road - and then after meeting his wife Amy, to the end of Harold Avenue.

He grew the company, then known as CorrectDeck, to 75 employees in a 24/7 operation and made the Inc 500 list several times. As the economy cratered in 2009, he was able to sell the company to a buyer who promised to keep it in Maine, and it still operates in the Biddeford Industrial Park under the name Duralife Decking, 24 years later! The company recycles millions of pounds of sawdust and #5 polypropylene plastic every year. Learn more about the story of CorrectDeck here.

Marty has always been dedicated to giving back. If you look around town you can see all the composite deck boards that Marty & his team donated over the years, from benches around town, Rotary Park skate park, West Brook Skating Rink, even the bathhouse parking area at Fortunes Rocks.

In a lucky move, Marty donated decking to a project to build an observation deck at Mt. Agamenticus. At an event to celebrate the project, Marty met his future wife Amy, and they have been married since 2005.

Amy is known for having worked at JFK Kindergarten for many years, registering families for school and arranging pickup and dropoff for parents and grandparents; and also as the longtime board chair of the Heart of Biddeford, a role in which she won statewide recognition.