Forget-her-not: Florist Helen Halloran hanging up her shears after 43 years
Halloran has been serving people in their happiest and saddest moments since 1983.
Florist Helen Halloran recently created a wedding arrangement for a young woman who used to come into the store as a child with her mom.
Such connections hit home for Halloran. “I can’t imagine doing anything else,” she says.
She’ll soon have to, though. After running the Acton Flower Shop in three locations over the last 43 years, Halloran is hanging up her shears, retiring just in time for a milestone birthday.
“I knew at 70 I wanted some time off, not to work six days a week,” she says.
Halloran has been serving people in their happiest and saddest moments since 1983, when she and her husband, David, took over the business at 8 Walden Street.
“I was working for the owner, Grace, and one day I came to work and she had passed away,” Halloran says. “My father-in-law, Robert Halloran, said I should buy it. We were only in our 20s, and we were too stupid to know what we were doing.”
With help from her mother and David’s parents, the couple bought the shop. David, a funeral director, put his job on hold. She ran the business at Walden Street for eight years, then moved to 109 Thoreau Street for 20 years before landing in West Acton.
‘Deep roots’
The new location enabled Halloran to save on rent and downsize. It’s also where she grew up, making the move an easy one.
“I have deep roots in West Acton,” Halloran says, “and this has been my favorite location of the three.”
She is friends with many other West Acton shop owners — such as Adam Stark, who owns Debra’s Natural Gourmet, and Jen McGonigle, who owns Joy Street Life + Home — and calls the district’s business community “collaborative.”
That’s in part because the merchants work together to put on three big annual events: the Holiday Stroll, Spring into West Acton, and autumn’s Discover West Acton Day.
“When I look around the West Acton business community, Helen, more than anyone, is the one holding us together,” Stark says. “She’s an organizer. She’s a politician. She’s (occasionally) a rabblerouser.”
Most of all, Halloran says, that sense of community comes from her customers, some of whom she’s known for over four decades: “You get to know families, all about them, and now I know their children and grandchildren.”
‘You keep learning’
The florist business has changed over the decades. Gone are the days of the cash register and paper and pen. Today, it’s a digital operation, including a website.
“It was gradual, and you keep learning, but it’s been a lot to learn,” Halloran says.
Over the years, even through Covid, Halloran’s shop has stayed open, filling birthday, holiday, and funeral orders with personalized touches such as Red Sox baseball caps, toy fire trucks, and even fishing rods.
Knowing she would not be renewing her lease, Halloran turned to fellow floral designer Renata Paes to see if she wanted to take over the business. Paes, who was already working with Halloran part time in the shop, will officially take ownership August 1, Halloran says.
But Halloran says she’s not going anywhere. She will stick around the shop during the transition and intends to enjoy West Acton’s shops in her retirement.
“It’s hard when you lose a business,” she says, “so I think they are happy I sold it and didn’t close.”
