Dallas

Founder of Longtime Dallas Business ‘Parkit Market' Passes Away

NBCUniversal, Inc.

Since opening in 1962 along Greenville Avenue, Parkit Market has been a Dallas institution. Family owned and run from the start, its doors opened long before convenience stores were on every corner.

“Greenville Avenue had just started to develop, there was not even a stoplight on the corner,” said Tony Todora, who began working at the family business when he was 18.

But earlier this week, Todora’s mother - founding owner Ann Todora passed away at age of 98, leaving a void not just at the business but in the neighborhood that grew up around it.

“She had a dynamic personality, she was like a dynamo. She loved it, she would not stay home,” remembered Tony Todora.

In addition to starting and running multiple businesses, Ann Todora raised a family of seven. Todora’s granddaughter said watching her grandmother lead by example showed her that as a woman anything was possible.

“It taught me to see that a woman could be the boss, to me that was just the way that was,” said Tiffany Todora Fulmer.

But perhaps more than her work ethic and drive, family members said they will miss Todora’s contagious love of life that included far more than just her family.

“She was mom to a lot of people besides just her seven kids, she was mom to so many customers throughout the last 58-years and it will be a great loss to our family,” said Tiffany Todora.

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