Sarah D. Martin

After graduating from Iowa State College in 1926, Sarah D. Martin, wife of 65 years of Leo Edmund Martin, (ISC24) dedicated her life to the service of others as wife, mother, citizen, volunteer and teacher.

While raising four children, she continually opened her home to others through the volatile years of World War II and the years that followed. In my youth, I remember no time when we did not have "guests" in our home. Once, a mother of two small girls whose husband was serving in the South Pacific; another, for four years a student at the University of Illinois; another, a family that had fallen on hard times. There was an uncle from here, a cousin from there, a grandmother who could no longer live alone, a family who had lost everything, including their son, in a fire. Through all of this, I never knew a time when the kitchen was not filled with the aroma of fresh-baked breads and rolls or the sweet smells of freshly canned vegetables and varied jams and jellies.

In all those times, I never heard her raise her voice.

Through the years, be it rain or snow, flu season or the heat of summer, every election day would find her, at 6:00 AM, at her post in the polling place making sure that everyone, the little old lady up the street or the first-time voter, got their allotted time in the voting booth.

Service to her country was as much a Christian responsibility as service to her neighbor. After her children were safely raised, she entered the career field as a teacher. She spent the next twenty-two years instilling in other people's children the same honor and respect for the human dignity that she tried to give to her own family. Over the years, though her classes were always small, her students consistently took the highest number of awards in the annual Science Fair sponsored by the Kansas City School District.

Sarah Dolan Martin exemplifies all that Iowa State University has striven to stand for over the years since she was a student on the Ames campus!

4/7/94