Individual Details
Alvin Piercy Martin
(June 25, 1921 - )
"Al was born in Montague County, Texas but spent his youth in Wellington, Collingsworth County, Texas. He graduated from the Wellington High School in 1939 and later attended several courses in Accounting, Marketing and Sales.
"Al served six months in the United States Army Reserve Corps and when World War II began he served three years in the Army Air Force as an administrative clerk. He took full advantage of his time in Service by attending radio school in Kansas City.
"Al married Dorothy Raehn on 10 November 1942. She was born 5 June 1924 to Mathew J. Raehn and Vida Melrose Curry. Al and Dorothy lived most of their married life in the Los Angeles area. Dorothy died in August 1990.
"Al was a member of the Pomona First Baptist Church, a charter member of the Breakfast Lions Club and Pomona P.T.A. where he served as Chairman of many committees in three different schools (elementary, Jr. high and High school). He was involved in the Boy Scouts, Y.M.C.A., Chamber of Commerce and the California Medical Assistants Association from whom he received the merit award for "Outstanding and Unselfish Contribution to the C.M.A.A.".
"For thirty years, Al managed and/or owned several businesses devoted to finding faster routines and more control for offices of the Healing Arts profession. For the past ten years he has devoted his time and talents to the Chiropractic profession.
"Al married Dee Dee Moore 14 February 1991 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Dee Dee was born and educated in Texas. When she entered the professional world she chose the healing art profession and has been quite successful. She teaches the principals of managing weight loss and behavior patterns.
"Al and Dee Dee have divided their time between their business in California and their ranch in Oklahoma. Al retired in June 1991 but since Dee Dee is still actively involved in her business in California they will continue to commute between their two homes.
"REFLECTIONS by Al Martin (written in June 1981)
"On this trip I cast my first backward glance. I wanted to do some things again. I wanted the years --- the wrong choices and lucky chances --- over again. It was a chance to think --- nostalgia seems to have stayed out of my memory until now and I realize the first 20 years of my life are hard to remember.
"With the help of the dictionary and a limited vocabulary, I choose to think of 60 as middle-aged. Middle age is a period of transition. It can be a period of re-evaluation, a period of new hopes or a time of early despair. It represents an opportunity for reflections, for gauging ones further course in life. Certain circumstances never need to be faced again. How does it feel to be 60? It doesn't feel anything. Neither did it when I was half a hundred, if you don't mind waking up several times each night and the sense that your legs will drop off if you run more than one block. Vitamins have more importance and I have taken time to look up the definition of tired. It is refreshing and enlightening, however, to know that confidence, competence, good manners, charm and class does not depend on me acting like a 25 year old. The next time I'm allowed to come to this planet I think I will be 35 or maybe 50 and stay that age.
"When I was growing up the rules were entirely different. I'm not sure certain changes aren't for the good. I don't disapprove of some of the ways my kids and most of the young people of their generation behave, but neither do I approve. My standards have changed --- many things do not have the same importance. However, pride, promises, accomplishments and contributions to our society never leave my mind. None of these changes came about without leaving a heavy mark on my personality and character. Of course, some of these changes were very positive, but, some I have not been able to accept.
"When I was a kid you could easily tell the middle-aged people from the others. They were either fat or wasting away and one couldn't imagine them ever being young. I can't remember the adults lying on the couch while the kids found other places, but I do remember having to wait until the adults finished eating because of lack of room around the table. Now I remember waiting until the children finish eating because of a lack of room around the table.
"What ever became of that middle age I speak of and will it ever come back? No! My middle age gang has been kept young by a howling mob of strangers at our heels known as the Baby Boom. There were so many of these little boomers that they got whatever they wanted. Exciting politics in the Sixties! Tuneless music! A sexual revolution! Misuse of drugs! The youth culture was for a while the only culture we had, so we graybeards found ourselves adding "cool", "I dig", "Hey Man" to our vocabulary just to keep up. The cause or effect of this was that the sweep simply went on and on. Unless you locked yourself in your room, you found yourself living in a steamy sex obsessed world catering to 25 and 30 year olds. Not that you had to take part, if you were up tight about it, but you had to look as if you took part, understood and condoned, if not approved.
"It took a while to get used to my sons sharing apartments with girls and it was something I never tried to explain to their grandmothers. Even though I thought the standards were set at a much earlier age, I have always been deeply appreciative of the mutual understanding and respect for each others opinion. On second thought, no one ever asked me to understand, they just asked me to accept, which I did --- not always immediately --- but eventually. I have learned to enjoy each one of my kids in their own special way as I have gotten older.
"My daughter, whom I have always tried to keep as a little girl, has always been much older than her years. In fact, she jumped to 21 and has been holding ever since I became 50 and stopped counting. There may be a lot of things she doesn't tell me anymore, but we still have an unspoken closeness.
"Perhaps I am guilty of keeping my youngest son younger than his years, but that is only when he is with me. He is mature for his age when he is with his peers and other adults. Anyway, you are old and carry responsibility for a long time.
"Because of the younger generation, came the fitness mania and the dieting dilemma. We wanted to be accepted and appear to understand the new society. Frequently stories were written portraying parents that are slowly driven mad by their kids freedom and who wind up making a lunge that they hadn't intended just to get even. In my youth the whole nation (my world) seemed like a Southern Baptist Seminary. Even if my mother could have been driven, there was no car to be used to pick up a pre-teenage date. After I was old enough to drive there still was no car, but who needed a car in a town one mile square. I wonder if the Baby Boomers (30 year olds) would believe me if I told them that quite often my dinner (supper) was a glass of milk and cornbread and that I went to bed so my only pair of jeans could be washed. I wonder if they can imagine how it feels to go to school with cardboard in their shoes and holes in their socks. Can they imagine what it was like without television?
"Meanwhile, what about that gang stepping on my heels. It has been a decade since the fever of the youth culture burned itself out, and there has been a change of character in the American population. In a word, the entire country has aged and grown a lot quieter. Although the ungodly racket of Rock can still be heard, it does not rule the dial as completely as it used to. Rock is that rare kind of music that can only be enjoyed while you are young.
"As this new generation discovers June weddings and stock options, they must wonder about the strange older generation---although they made us what we are today. As for activist politics, check any anti-nuclear demonstration and you are likely to find it peppered with parents who were taught to be activists by their kids and haven't kicked the habit.
"While some people starved in the Roaring Twenties others grew rich in the Depression and some even passed the Sixties normally. I'm thinking about the middle of the middle, where suddenly a whole generation began to act as rich kids and one found oneself trying to act like a rich kid's parent.
"Traditionally, the upper class stays young and healthy looking longer --- they have more time to do it. But by and large, the poor continue to get middle-aged the old way; and the affluent can still buy their way out.
"So the future of middle-age depends, as always, on the state of the mind. That grown up, laying on the couch, in the old days was probably exhausted from overwork. He was much too tired to jog or work-out. The age lines on his face were chiseled in deep by worry, and those were the days that started rumors about sex being a bad joke and the comment --- Is that all there is?
"From where I sit, nothing quite like this is on the horizon. If hard times come again, they won't take the same form. Work weeks are likely to get shorter, not longer, and we will have a range of narcotics from TV to Valium to subdue the killer worries. As the Baby Boomers move through their forties and fifties, merchants will knock themselves out to make these decades comply for them.
"Although it is nice to be joined in middle age by so many pleasant faces, it will make a lot of us for the next smaller generation to carry on our backs.
"With this fragile hold on immortality, perhaps even old age will lose a terror. I've never felt better, and besides, by then they'll have perfected something.
"So this is not a bad time to be whatever age it is I happen to be right now. Regrets, yes, I have some---but a life full of experiences, realities, heartbreaks, disappointments, pleasures and many rewards have prepared me for the next 60 years. I am proud of the contributions I have made and eagerly look forward to the ones I will be able to make in the future.
"This monologue was started as an emotional outlet of my personal feelings --- let the memories roll on paper so I could recall and then discard. Since it has never been easy for me to express my inner feelings, I decided to keep these thoughts and share them with you. My period was thoroughly recorded and is frozen on miles and miles of celluloid and I can move back into it any time.
"Yes, I can even prove to my grand kids that we really did have some cars and radios when I was their age. (Al Martin was living at Ontario, California in 1992. His Social Security number was 462-07-1678.)" Information from a personal interview with Al by Reta Evans; letters from his sister, Verda Westmoreland to Reta Evans.)
"Al served six months in the United States Army Reserve Corps and when World War II began he served three years in the Army Air Force as an administrative clerk. He took full advantage of his time in Service by attending radio school in Kansas City.
"Al married Dorothy Raehn on 10 November 1942. She was born 5 June 1924 to Mathew J. Raehn and Vida Melrose Curry. Al and Dorothy lived most of their married life in the Los Angeles area. Dorothy died in August 1990.
"Al was a member of the Pomona First Baptist Church, a charter member of the Breakfast Lions Club and Pomona P.T.A. where he served as Chairman of many committees in three different schools (elementary, Jr. high and High school). He was involved in the Boy Scouts, Y.M.C.A., Chamber of Commerce and the California Medical Assistants Association from whom he received the merit award for "Outstanding and Unselfish Contribution to the C.M.A.A.".
"For thirty years, Al managed and/or owned several businesses devoted to finding faster routines and more control for offices of the Healing Arts profession. For the past ten years he has devoted his time and talents to the Chiropractic profession.
"Al married Dee Dee Moore 14 February 1991 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Dee Dee was born and educated in Texas. When she entered the professional world she chose the healing art profession and has been quite successful. She teaches the principals of managing weight loss and behavior patterns.
"Al and Dee Dee have divided their time between their business in California and their ranch in Oklahoma. Al retired in June 1991 but since Dee Dee is still actively involved in her business in California they will continue to commute between their two homes.
"REFLECTIONS by Al Martin (written in June 1981)
"On this trip I cast my first backward glance. I wanted to do some things again. I wanted the years --- the wrong choices and lucky chances --- over again. It was a chance to think --- nostalgia seems to have stayed out of my memory until now and I realize the first 20 years of my life are hard to remember.
"With the help of the dictionary and a limited vocabulary, I choose to think of 60 as middle-aged. Middle age is a period of transition. It can be a period of re-evaluation, a period of new hopes or a time of early despair. It represents an opportunity for reflections, for gauging ones further course in life. Certain circumstances never need to be faced again. How does it feel to be 60? It doesn't feel anything. Neither did it when I was half a hundred, if you don't mind waking up several times each night and the sense that your legs will drop off if you run more than one block. Vitamins have more importance and I have taken time to look up the definition of tired. It is refreshing and enlightening, however, to know that confidence, competence, good manners, charm and class does not depend on me acting like a 25 year old. The next time I'm allowed to come to this planet I think I will be 35 or maybe 50 and stay that age.
"When I was growing up the rules were entirely different. I'm not sure certain changes aren't for the good. I don't disapprove of some of the ways my kids and most of the young people of their generation behave, but neither do I approve. My standards have changed --- many things do not have the same importance. However, pride, promises, accomplishments and contributions to our society never leave my mind. None of these changes came about without leaving a heavy mark on my personality and character. Of course, some of these changes were very positive, but, some I have not been able to accept.
"When I was a kid you could easily tell the middle-aged people from the others. They were either fat or wasting away and one couldn't imagine them ever being young. I can't remember the adults lying on the couch while the kids found other places, but I do remember having to wait until the adults finished eating because of lack of room around the table. Now I remember waiting until the children finish eating because of a lack of room around the table.
"What ever became of that middle age I speak of and will it ever come back? No! My middle age gang has been kept young by a howling mob of strangers at our heels known as the Baby Boom. There were so many of these little boomers that they got whatever they wanted. Exciting politics in the Sixties! Tuneless music! A sexual revolution! Misuse of drugs! The youth culture was for a while the only culture we had, so we graybeards found ourselves adding "cool", "I dig", "Hey Man" to our vocabulary just to keep up. The cause or effect of this was that the sweep simply went on and on. Unless you locked yourself in your room, you found yourself living in a steamy sex obsessed world catering to 25 and 30 year olds. Not that you had to take part, if you were up tight about it, but you had to look as if you took part, understood and condoned, if not approved.
"It took a while to get used to my sons sharing apartments with girls and it was something I never tried to explain to their grandmothers. Even though I thought the standards were set at a much earlier age, I have always been deeply appreciative of the mutual understanding and respect for each others opinion. On second thought, no one ever asked me to understand, they just asked me to accept, which I did --- not always immediately --- but eventually. I have learned to enjoy each one of my kids in their own special way as I have gotten older.
"My daughter, whom I have always tried to keep as a little girl, has always been much older than her years. In fact, she jumped to 21 and has been holding ever since I became 50 and stopped counting. There may be a lot of things she doesn't tell me anymore, but we still have an unspoken closeness.
"Perhaps I am guilty of keeping my youngest son younger than his years, but that is only when he is with me. He is mature for his age when he is with his peers and other adults. Anyway, you are old and carry responsibility for a long time.
"Because of the younger generation, came the fitness mania and the dieting dilemma. We wanted to be accepted and appear to understand the new society. Frequently stories were written portraying parents that are slowly driven mad by their kids freedom and who wind up making a lunge that they hadn't intended just to get even. In my youth the whole nation (my world) seemed like a Southern Baptist Seminary. Even if my mother could have been driven, there was no car to be used to pick up a pre-teenage date. After I was old enough to drive there still was no car, but who needed a car in a town one mile square. I wonder if the Baby Boomers (30 year olds) would believe me if I told them that quite often my dinner (supper) was a glass of milk and cornbread and that I went to bed so my only pair of jeans could be washed. I wonder if they can imagine how it feels to go to school with cardboard in their shoes and holes in their socks. Can they imagine what it was like without television?
"Meanwhile, what about that gang stepping on my heels. It has been a decade since the fever of the youth culture burned itself out, and there has been a change of character in the American population. In a word, the entire country has aged and grown a lot quieter. Although the ungodly racket of Rock can still be heard, it does not rule the dial as completely as it used to. Rock is that rare kind of music that can only be enjoyed while you are young.
"As this new generation discovers June weddings and stock options, they must wonder about the strange older generation---although they made us what we are today. As for activist politics, check any anti-nuclear demonstration and you are likely to find it peppered with parents who were taught to be activists by their kids and haven't kicked the habit.
"While some people starved in the Roaring Twenties others grew rich in the Depression and some even passed the Sixties normally. I'm thinking about the middle of the middle, where suddenly a whole generation began to act as rich kids and one found oneself trying to act like a rich kid's parent.
"Traditionally, the upper class stays young and healthy looking longer --- they have more time to do it. But by and large, the poor continue to get middle-aged the old way; and the affluent can still buy their way out.
"So the future of middle-age depends, as always, on the state of the mind. That grown up, laying on the couch, in the old days was probably exhausted from overwork. He was much too tired to jog or work-out. The age lines on his face were chiseled in deep by worry, and those were the days that started rumors about sex being a bad joke and the comment --- Is that all there is?
"From where I sit, nothing quite like this is on the horizon. If hard times come again, they won't take the same form. Work weeks are likely to get shorter, not longer, and we will have a range of narcotics from TV to Valium to subdue the killer worries. As the Baby Boomers move through their forties and fifties, merchants will knock themselves out to make these decades comply for them.
"Although it is nice to be joined in middle age by so many pleasant faces, it will make a lot of us for the next smaller generation to carry on our backs.
"With this fragile hold on immortality, perhaps even old age will lose a terror. I've never felt better, and besides, by then they'll have perfected something.
"So this is not a bad time to be whatever age it is I happen to be right now. Regrets, yes, I have some---but a life full of experiences, realities, heartbreaks, disappointments, pleasures and many rewards have prepared me for the next 60 years. I am proud of the contributions I have made and eagerly look forward to the ones I will be able to make in the future.
"This monologue was started as an emotional outlet of my personal feelings --- let the memories roll on paper so I could recall and then discard. Since it has never been easy for me to express my inner feelings, I decided to keep these thoughts and share them with you. My period was thoroughly recorded and is frozen on miles and miles of celluloid and I can move back into it any time.
"Yes, I can even prove to my grand kids that we really did have some cars and radios when I was their age. (Al Martin was living at Ontario, California in 1992. His Social Security number was 462-07-1678.)" Information from a personal interview with Al by Reta Evans; letters from his sister, Verda Westmoreland to Reta Evans.)
Events
| Birth | June 25, 1921 | Nocona, Montague County, Texas | |||
| Marriage | November 10, 1942 | Dorothy Mae Raehn | |||
| Marriage | February 14, 1991 | New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana - Dee Dee Moore |
Families
| Spouse | Dorothy Mae Raehn (1924 - 1990) |
| Child | Alan Decker Martin (1946 - ) |
| Child | Christopher Perry Martin (1948 - ) |
| Child | Terrence Robay Martin (1953 - 1994) |
| Child | Jan Russell Martin (1958 - ) |
| Child | Laurel Elise Martin (1961 - ) |
| Child | James Wesley Martin (1962 - ) |
| Spouse | Dee Dee Moore ( - ) |
| Father | James Oscar Albert Martin (1886 - 1939) |
| Mother | Laura Jane McCann (1885 - 1975) |
| Sibling | Verda Mable Martin (1907 - ) |
| Sibling | William Franklin "Buster" Martin (1910 - ) |
| Sibling | Richard Craig Martin (1913 - ) |
| Sibling | Joy Beatrice Martin (1915 - 1988) |