Shirley Mae Martin

Former Port O’Connor resident Shirley Mae Brown Martin, 77, wife of former Port O’Connor First Baptist Church minister, the Rev. Donnie L. Martin, passed away quietly in her sleep on Saturday, September 9, 2023, in a Dallas area hospice after an extended illness. Shirley formerly played the piano and the organ for her husband at the historical Port O’Connor church until health issues forced him to retire and move to assisted living in Port Lavaca some years ago. He preceded her in death in January 2022. Shirley will be buried next to him in a public graveside service at the Port O’Connor Cemetery on Sept. 23, 2023 at 2 p.m. She would love to know that locals from the Port O’Connor community visited with her.

Born on May 16, 1946, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, she grew up in assorted small towns and rural areas in Mississippi’s eastern piney woods. She attended elementary school at Linwood Public School District in surrounding rural Neshoba County, where her family lived on a dirt road near a creek. She and her sister occasionally fished in the creek with their mother, who taught them survival skills like finding and digging for worms, placing a line and hook on a cane pole from the field, catching fish, and then cleaning and cooking them. Shirley hated it, but her sister cherishes those times as particularly special memories of a distant past. She recalls that as a child she often wanted to follow her older sister around.

Shirley began avidly playing the piano by the age of 11. When she was 12, the family moved to Union, Mississippi a small town of some 5,000 people about 40 miles further east. Throughout the family’s many short-distance moves, her first instrument, a giant upright Baby Grand, often determined where they could or could not live because it took six strong men to carry it, and not all houses would accommodate it. She was delighted when her younger brother Paul, was born in 1960 and immediately showed an interest in music too. Shirley, her brother, and her sister often played board games together.

Shirley studied classical music formally for 7 years and graduated from high school and from senior piano classes in 1964. She often practiced for hours. Her solo at her senior recital was Ludwig van Beethoven’s "Moonlight Sonata," and she also loved playing from Franz Schubert, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, in addition to church music. While she lived there, a high point in her life was meeting world-renowned pianist Van Cliburn, who was older than her by some 12 years, but he loved meeting piano students, and he occasionally visited his aunt and uncle, a local professor, who lived nearby in rural Mississippi.

The year following her high school graduation, Shirley began attending East Central Junior College, since renamed East Central Community College, which has served students in East Central Mississippi since 1854. It was located 8 miles east of Union, so she commuted back and forth for 2 years. One weekend toward the end of her sophomore year, as she was returning home, the student driving her crashed the car into a tree, leaving Shirley with debilitating injuries. She spent more than a year after that recovering at home with a fractured spine and other internal injuries. When she could walk again with a back brace, she used a walker for several months.

After her recovery, she resumed her studies at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in elementary education and a minor in music in 1969. By February 1970, she married Donnie, who she met in Hattiesburg after becoming active in Hattiesburg area churches. Immediately after their wedding, he voluntarily joined the U.S. Air Force to fulfill his wartime military obligations in Vietnam. While he was gone, Shirley stayed in Hattiesburg with his parents.

Volunteering reduced Donnie’s in-theater requirement to 3 years, and he was sent back to Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, as a member of the Security Police before his time was up. She rejoined him, and later they were sent to the former Carswell Air Force Strategic Air Command (SAC) base in Fort Worth for a year. There they were both very involved in Castleberry Baptist Church, which had a Christian school. She taught in the school for 1 year. She also reunited with her sister and her brother, who already were living in Fort Worth by that time.

When Donnie completed his service time, they moved to Springfield, Missouri where he completed his seminary work, and they began working together in small Baptist churches across various states, first as music and youth ministers before he eventually became a pastor. Some of the most memorable were churches in Camden, Arkansas and in Independence, Missouri before they returned to Mississippi and lived in the Delta for several years. He pastored at an independent Baptist church in Leland, Mississippi near the larger town of Greenville, Mississippi. When the chance to return to Texas popped up for them in Port O’Connor after their long career, it became a sort of serendipity. They much preferred small-town life to life in the big city. They both wanted to be buried together in Port O’Connor.

After Donnie’s passing in 2022, Shirley moved to Greenville, Texas, where she lived with her much-loved half-brother, Korean war veteran Thomas Stanley Brown, 91, until her death. He preceded her in death by only a couple of weeks.

Shirley was also preceded in death by her father, Thomas Quincy Brown, who was originally from Mansfield, Tennessee; her mother, Ozie Ilean Brown, originally from Philadelphia, Mississippi; and her younger brother, Paul Douglas Brown of Union, Mississippi.

Shirley is survived by her sister, Wanda Kay Brown Foster, who was born in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and continues to live in Fort Worth, Texas with her husband, George L. Foster III. She also is survived by her older brother Stanley’s surviving family, including his widow, Kathy Spellacy Brown; and Shirley’s three half-nieces and one half-nephew with whom she had a close relationship. They include Becki Brown Knight and her husband Glenn Knight of Watauga, Texas; Beverly Brown Farnsworth and her husband Jay Farnsworth of Terre Haute, Indiana; Peggy and Dennis Esters of Royse City, Texas; and half-nephew, Thomas Stanley Brown, Jr. of Greenville, Texas. Other survivors include numerous grand nieces and nephews living in Texas and Indiana.