Editor’s Note: Over the next two weeks, Bethesda Beat will be looking back at 2015 with the stories and trends that made news this year.
Here’s one of our favorites, the Sept. 1 story of how East Bethesda residents threw an impromptu retirement celebration for the owners of the World Market on its last night in business:
The message went out on the Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School listserv around noon Monday.
World Market, the deli and small grocery store on the corner of Wisconsin and Maple avenues since 1980, was closing as owners Vart and Takuhi Ozbenian headed off to retirement. Monday night would be its last night in business.
By 8 p.m. Monday, an impromptu pizza party, retirement bash and celebration of the husband-and-wife ownership team had broken out inside—with seemingly the whole neighborhood invited.
“They’ve watched a lot of kids grow up here,” said Shaunt Ozbenian, Vart and Takuhi’s son. He worked in the store growing up and still pitched in on some weekends despite having his own full-time job.
“Those kids are coming back as adults, so it’s quite overwhelming for them at the moment,” Ozbenian said of his parents. “I’m sure it’ll sink in over the next couple of days that they’re in their retirement and they’re not going to see some of these faces for a while.”
Over 35 years, the Ozbenians became a constant presence for those who live in East Bethesda, a neighborhood of single-family homes east of Wisconsin Avenue and a rapidly changing Bethesda.
Early next year, a Harris Teeter grocery store on the ground floor of a new apartment building will open a block north and on the opposite side of Wisconsin Avenue from the World Market corner.
The neighborhood itself has gone through a character-defining transformation.
Once made up almost exclusively of small Cape Cod and colonial homes, East Bethesda is now full of teardown projects that have made way for bigger mansion-like homes filling up whole lots.
Some estimate more than 200 of East Bethesda’s original homes have been torn down and rebuilt over the last 20 years.
The Ozbenians were there through all of it.
They were known to extend credit to customers who were a little bit short, and those customers usually paid up later. Some called Vart “Uncle,” because that’s what his nine nephews who worked in the store as teens would call him.
Longtime customers who came in Monday night were greeted with a hug from Vart and a kiss on the cheek from Takuhi, who was near tears as she rung up customer after customer—all for the last time.
“They know all the people here,” East Bethesda resident Diane Kupelian said.
“And everybody knows them,” another neighbor chimed in.
People came streaming in, made aware of the news by the listserv post, Facebook messages and texts. Pizza Tempo, a nearby pizza shop, donated pizzas for the crowd.
A line of customers stretched toward the back of the store, clearing the shelves of the last beer, wine and other groceries the World Market would ever sell.
Many opened those beers on the spot, ate some pizza and chatted with friends. Some took cell phone photos of the happy couple, who immigrated to the U.S. from Turkey in 1973.
“You really don’t see this anymore,” Kupelian said. “They’re absolutely delightful people.”
After 35 years of opening and closing 363 days a year, the couple plans to take it slow in retirement. A trip to Armenia is in the works.
Vart Ozbenian said after that, there might be “more to come.”
A local group of new owners plans to make some improvements to the building and rename it Maple Beer and Wine.
“Maybe if the new guy needs me,” Ozbenian said, “I’ll come work here.”
