Martha J. Williams

Martha Jean Williams 87, most recently of Temperance, Mich. passed away at the Merit House Nursing Home in Toledo, Ohio, on May 8, 2021. Declining health after contracting the coronavirus in early November 2020 had very sadly diminished her health and vitality. After several hospitalizations and rehabilitation stays she was finally cared for by the kind and loving staff at the Merit House Nursing Home in their veteran’s unit. This was in conjunction with the wonderful caregivers of Hospice of N.W. Ohio. They all very compassionately and heroically carried through with their work of caring for others at a difficult and challenging time. Martha was born in her parents home in Royal Oak, Mich on November 12, 1933, she was delivered by her beloved Aunt Goldie. Martha was the fifth and youngest child of Nelson Garrett-Williams Sr. and Sylvia Marie Smith-Bowen. She would live in Royal Oak and Highland Park, Mich until she was ten years old when her mother moved the family to Cygnet, Ohio, Sylvia, her mother, had accepted a teaching position in the local junior and senior high school. Martha often recalled their 1943 move by saying that she could find her way anywhere around Detroit, but when they first moved to little Cygnet she’d get lost trying to find her way home from the post office or the corner store. However, as throughout her lifetime it didn’t take Martha long to get her bearings to find her way around and to make new friends and discover new interests. In Cygnet she did after school and summer jobs taking care of lawns and errands for neighbors, and later as a teen she became the custodian for both the Methodist Church and Church of Christ in town. She developed an early work ethic and independence which became hallmarks of her life and very much part of her character. She was an avid reader and as an adolescent especially enjoyed mystery and adventure novels, later in life she also discovered the classics becoming as much a devotee of William Shakespeare and others as to contemporary writers of her time. Books she said were her favorite gifts to receive for birthdays and Christmas. When her vision was too compromised to read for pleasure any longer, she became a fan of BBC, classic and retro television programs. Martha with her brother George and sister Mary also lived in Bay Port, Mich between 1945-46, with their mother who taught there for a brief time. While in Bay Port, Martha and George discovered a nest of baby rattlesnakes, thinking it fun they gathered them up into a cloth sack and then took and released the babies into the school building they attended and where their mother taught. The school had to be closed for a week in order to eradicate the slithering dangers. George and Martha now grounded by their mother, who they had confessed to as the perpetrators, began feeling the stupidity and shame for what they’d done after seeing their mother fearful of losing her teaching job. That week off they would uncomfortably endure the close quarter punishment of their mother’s silence and stinging looks of disapproval, she seldom needed to even raise her voice, just that look could smite you! Martha would recall that they wished they’d just gotten a beating because it would have been easier to endure. The children would return to Cygnet in 1946 to begin finishing their junior high and senior high school educations; they did so without causing a crisis in school ever again. After graduating from high school in 1951 and experiencing, over several years, the limitations of work opportunities for women, Martha made the decision in 1957 to join the Women's Army Corps, known then as WAC’s. This would begin a 22 year career of service in the Army with postings throughout the U.S. and in Germany and Japan. In 1960 after Martha’s father’s passing, her mother Sylvia joined her as her family dependent in Germany, this began 17 years of travel and adventure for mother and daughter. They would see Europe, the Middle East, the Holy Lands, Northern Africa, the United States, Mexico and Asia. In the United States they attended official ceremonies and luncheons, including some at the White House. On a visit to Rome, on the invitation of friends who had a private audience, they met and Sylvia was blessed with a kiss upon her forehead by Pope John XXIII. Martha was very proud and happy to have given her mother the opportunity to travel the world and to experience and enjoy so many countries and cultures. Martha fealt it was a way to show her mother the appreciation she had for the hard work and sacrifices that were made when she and her siblings were growing up. In her Army career Martha first trained as a Cryptologist and in Telecommunications at Ft. McClellan and Ft. Mason. Later she became an Administrative Specialist in Germany and on Governors Island, N.Y.. She performed a variety of jobs throughout her work life in the Army. While at the Pentagon she worked in communications and public relations where she coordinated funerals for prestigious military and government officials, including Dwight D. Eisenhower. Martha met Mamie Eisenhower while Martha and the former president and general were in Walter Reed Hospital as patients at the same time, which happened to coincide with the end of his life. As a result his funeral plans became much more personal to her. At the Pentagon she also became a military liaison to Congress, responsible for communications between those branches of government.. At Fort Sam Houston she had even accepted a challenging position as a company commander responsible for a unit of rather troubled and quite challenging enlistees. During her last tour of foreign duty to Camp Zama, Japan in 1976 Martha worked as an administrator for a unit of Medical Addiction Specialists. In Japan her mother became unusually ill and was diagnosed with terminal cancer. This prompted their return to the United States and San Antonio, Tx. where Sylvia passed away in 1978. Martha retired from the Army in 1979 due to injuries sustained in a bombing incident while on an earlier highly classified mission outside the country. Of those injured from the explosion, and despite being told not to expect to live for longer than six months and to get her affairs in order, Martha became the only one of her colleagues to survive beyond two years time after the incident; she lived another 45 years and into old age. She would joke saying it was clear evidence that only the good die young. Yet in contrast throughout her life and career Martha received many commendations, awards and medals: the Army Commendation with Fourth Oak Leaf Cluster, Good Conduct Medal (Seventh Award), the National Defense Medal and even a Marksmanship Badge (M1). She was often first in her military studies and she received consistent marks of excellence for her work and dedication to duty. In retirement Martha first lived in the home she’d purchased in beautiful San Antonio, Tx., and then in 1992 she decided to move to the Armed Forces Retirement Home, the AFRH in Washington, D.C.. There she was an enthusiastic volunteer, participated in many activities and lead a women’s veteran group. She was asked to serve as a representative to the U.S. Congress for her fellow Soldiers’ Home colleagues and was recognized by the President of the United States for her volunteerism. In Martha’s free time she enjoyed miniature model building; a model she made of the Lincoln Cottage, Abraham Lincoln’s summer retreat in D.C. on the AFRH campus, where it is believed he drafted the Emancipation Proclamation, she gifted to the White House where they displayed the model for many years during the Christmas Holidays. She volunteered with the Sisters of Atonement at their Washington, D.C. Retreat House, whose mission is serving the homeless and poor, and who were neighbors of and volunteers at the Soldiers’ Home. Her beloved friend Sister Josephine Dullaghan prayed for Martha and her loved ones over the years and has had a special Mass said in Martha’s honor. Martha’s passing occurred on the Saint Feastday of St. Peter of Tarentaise, who was a reformer of corruption and the founder of a hospice serving the sick, needy and weary. With the complications she suffered from the coronavirus and the unfortunate politicization of the illness, that sadly contributed to the loss of Martha and hundreds of thousands of others, it’s perhaps of relevance that she passed away on that particular Saint Feastday. Martha was not Catholic, but believed that faith, no matter how practiced, when done in and for good, was good. This she also believed with people of no particular faith, but who did good in their lives. She extended her friendship to be inclusive of all types of people from all walks of life. While living at the Soldiers’ Home in D.C., with the other resident veterans, Martha enjoyed day trips shopping and liked going to Amish and other cultural and regional destinations. She also enjoyed excursions to casinos where she was an accomplished blackjack player. She went on ocean liner cruises with friends and had hoped to try a river cruise on the Mississippi or other American river one day. Wherever she happened to be she thoroughly enjoyed good restaurants and loved nearly all types of food, but she had a special fondness for fresh vegetables. In 2016 Martha moved to Temperance, Mich to be nearer to her relatives in Ohio and Michigan. She had once again left urban life for a more rural one, just like she’d done as a ten year old. In Temperance she made many new friends at the senior community Moongate where she lived and she enjoyed a variety of activities with them until her illness last Fall. Many friends there have expressed their joy in having known Martha and their sadness in her loss. Martha was preceded in death by her parents Nelson and Sylvia Williams and all her siblings: brothers Nelson G. Williams Jr. his wife Marion and his later life partner Alice. Brothers Paul W. Williams, George R. Williams, his wife Hilda; sister Mary E. and her husband Walter F. Counterman, and nephew Roger Williams. Martha is survived by her sister in law Virginia Trimble-Williams, nine nieces, two nephews and many great and great, great nieces and nephews. Martha will be interred in Oak Grove Cemetery, adjacent to Bowling Green State University, in Bowling Green, Ohio; very near her beloved mother Sylvia Bowen- Williams, her favorite Aunt Goldie Bowen-Herbert and much loved grandparents Bert and Luella Bowen. She will be laid to rest with them under a canopy of trees planted by Sylvia, Goldie and Bert Bowen when he was the superintendent of the cemetery over a hundred years ago. In honor of Martha’s service and dedication to the United States, the U.S. Constitution, and in her belief in our democracy and of all people's freedoms, a military memorial burial will be conducted with her family in attendance. If wished, donations are suggested to the Women's Army Corps Veterans' Association - Army Women United (WACVA-AWU), The Wounded Warrior Project, Hospice of N.W. Ohio, The Graymoor Sisters of Atonement, Garrison, N.Y., or a charity of the donors choice. Arrangements were made by the Cremation Society of Toledo. In the fall of 1863, during the Civil War, at a time when people were already weary of the war, in his poem “Voluntaries”, Ralph Waldo Emerson paid tribute to those prepared to sacrifice all for the sake of the Union. In 1966 expanding on Emerson’s theme of duty, in an essay to the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, Martha shared her beliefs on what she thought were our responsibilities: to our country, the world, and each other. With all we’ve experienced of late; political populism which threatens democracy, and a pandemic that was politicized costing hundreds of thousands of people their lives, Martha’s thoughts from fifty five years ago are still relevant today, perhaps more so. In Martha’s own words… October 16, 1966 By: Martha J. Williams “Defending Freedom, Safeguarding America” Today we are not just “Americans”, we are world citizens, responsible to our God and our conscience for tomorrow’s world. With such responsibilities, we cannot shrug our shoulders and say “it's no concern of ours”. A threat to the freedoms of any people is a potential threat to our domestic freedom. When friends, neighbors, or countries are constantly intimidated by bullies of the world, we cannot, we must not, stand idly aside feeling “we don’t want to get involved”. We are involved, we shall always be involved with the destiny of mankind. When pestilence threatens, we do not sit and wait to be overcome, we employ every means we can to rid ourselves and others of such threats. Can we do less when freedom is threatened? “When duty whispers low, ‘Thou must’, The youth replies, ‘l can’.” Ralph Waldo Emerson Duty whispers increasingly louder in today’s world of super war capabilities. In order to preserve the freedoms our ancestors fought and died for, we must answer the whisper, nay, the call of duty. This call can be heard not just on our soil, but throughout the world. We shall never be free when others are oppressed and we heed not the call of duty. When our aid is sought by those unable, because of size or inner conflict, to help themselves, we must, and shall, accept our responsibility . As a responsible nation in a world of conflict and international irresponsibility, we can and will fulfill our commitments to mankind. Thus we insure our dependents the opportunity to live in a world where they may choose and not be told; where they may live and not just exist; where they may grow and prosper physically and spiritually and not cringe in fear of distrust. Let us all then defend our land, both here and abroad, against any force which would weaken and destroy us. Let us heed the “whisper of duty” and fulfill our commitments so that America and the “free world” may remain “free”. Martha J. Williams then: SP6 (E-6), WA 8 216 563, HQ Co., U.S. Army WAC Ft. Meyer, VIrginia