Graham Passed on Love of Clocks
Noah Kline and Rick Graham 
Rick Graham, owner of Maryland Clock Company
By Susan Nolan
Some people spend a lifetime searching for love, but when 12-year-old Doris Day met 14-year-old Rick Graham at the Green Meadows Recreation Center in Hyattsville, she knew she could stop looking. “We were best friends. We raised each other.”
With written permission from Doris’ parents, the couple married five short years later.
By then, Rick already had an established business. He had apprenticed under his father and when his father fell ill, he took over the family clock repair shop. He graduated from high school two years later. Doris was by his side the whole time.
“Our dates were delivering grandfather clocks, and then, he’d take me to dinner afterward,” she remembers with a smile.
Together, Doris and Rick raised three children and sold and repaired countless clocks, first in downtown D.C., then in Maryland. After 27 years in Bowie, they relocated Maryland Clock Company to Davidsonville. Today, the showroom and repair shop are filled with clocks of every size and age, and their clientele comes from all over the country.
Rick Graham died at sunrise on Sunday, November 21, less than three weeks after being diagnosed with cancer. This came only days after Doris’ mother, Alice Day passed away at age 97.
“I don’t know what I would do without our customers,” Doris says. “People are amazing. And there’s something special about people who are willing to keep an old clock running.”
In addition to his love of music and football, Rick passed down his entrepreneurial spirit to his children. Daughter Sarah Graham Kline owns Time For Travel, a travel agency specializing in destination weddings, honeymoons and multi-generational vacations. Son Steven Graham is an arborist for the Architect of the Capitol, and he owns Independent Tree Care.
Grandson Noah Kline has spent the past four years learning the ins and outs of clock repair. In 2018, he began an apprenticeship, working with Rick daily. “He had so much work, he needed help, and I was at a point in my own life where I wanted a change,” Noah says.
Noah doesn’t anticipate making too many changes to the successful family business. He, along with his grandmother, will continue to repair new, antique and vintage clocks. His goal is “to keep the pendulum swinging.”