Frances Louise Martin

Frances Louise Martin, born April 6, 1917, died Wednesday, April 8, 2015, at the age of 98 surrounded by her loving family. Frances was born and raised in Pendleton, Oregon, where she lived with her father, Federal Judge James Alger Fee of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, her mother, Frances Waldo Fee, and her younger sisters, Marjorie and Lillian. She attended Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. After teaching high school Latin and English for a few years, she went on to obtain her Master’s in Education from Syracuse University in New York. She then moved to Washington, D.C., during WWII where she met George Conery Martin of Little Rock, Arkansas, who worked for the U.S. Weather Bureau. They became engaged and she followed him to his posting in Mexico City where they were married on January 10, 1947. After six months, she joined George’s family in Little Rock where she gave birth a few months later to the first of their four children. She and George lived happily in Little Rock for over 50 years, building a home on Martin family land and raising their children there. In the last years of their lives, they moved to Memphis where her beloved George died in 2013. Frances is survived by her children, Mary Frances, Jim, John, and Agnes Louise; her grandchildren, Augusta, Christopher Martin, Anna, Madeline, Jared, Katherine, and Peter; and her great-grandchildren, Laila, Nicholas, and Isabella. She will be greatly missed.