In 1980 Ken retired from thirty-three years of school teaching and in 1983 I retired from twenty- four years. We were both ready to stop teaching and accepted the retirement time as a special present. It was time for us to spend time together doing anything we wanted to do.
We enjoyed the leisure time. We filled each day with family, hobbies, friends and things we had always dreamed of having time to do. We made no schedules, "just did what come naturally." Our health was good. Our family lived close enough that we could visit them. We spent holidays and special times with those we loved. Everything seemed so good.
Unknown to us, there were demons at work inside Ken's body that we never suspected. On the morning of November 20, 1986 he and my brother, Orvis McGuffin and our cousin Al Hurst had planned to go Quail Hunting on the first day of Quail season. This is always an exciting time of the year for Ken for he loves to quail hunt with his friends. They put the dogs in the old Blue Dodge "doolly" and started for Underwood's pasture across the river west of Martha. This Underwood farm was not cultivated but allowed to grow in its natural state of weeds, weeds and weed. All this made good cover for quail and they always jumped several coveys around the man made water tank.
Happily they drove through the gate with that Old Blue Dodge across a small drainage ditch that was a little muddy and climbed the next rise. Stopped and unloaded their guns and dogs. Each one anticipating a great day of hunting and enjoyment. They spread out with the dogs in front of them and began to walk through the briars and weeds.
Unknown to Orvis and Al, Ken lagged behind but did not indicate that anything was wrong. The next time they looked around, Ken was not to be seen. Orvis and Al turned back and began to hunt for him. After a few minutes they found him on the ground where he had fallen with a heart attack. Of course they were all scared to death. They had to load him and all the dogs in the truck which complicated the situation. The dogs were excited about hunting and did not want to get back in a cage. Orvis and Al got Ken in the truck and took him twenty miles to Memorial hospital in Altus, Oklahoma.
Orvis said, "As we got to the emergency room, the dogs were howling up a storm and we were trying to get Ken into the emergency room. After Ken was with in the hospital, Orvis told Al to stay with Ken and he would go back and try to get the dogs settled down. When he got back to the truck he accidentally let one of the dogs out of the pen and that dog acted like he was wild and starts off across the hospital lawn in a high lope. Orvis is running after the dog and finally catches him and puts him back in the pick up. He leaves the dogs still in the back of the pick up but they are very unhappy.
After it was all over we could look back at the dog incident and laugh but at the time Orvis and Al were not doing much laughing. Ken was very dangerously ill and was diagnosed with Congested Heart Failure. The next day he was transported, by helicopter, to Baptist Hospital in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He was operated on for triple by pass surgery. Everything went wrong and he clung to life for six weeks before he was strong enough to leave the hospital. The doctors told him to go home and do the best he could with the rest of his life. They did not expect him to live.
Our lives were not “normal” from that day until he died. The first year he was sure he was going to die. Every day he brooded about his health and was very depressed. He actually sat down in his chair and waited to die. He was miserable and made everyone around him miserable.
The second year he decided he wasn't going to die and his health began to improve. We would go to the doctors and they did not do anything but give him some more pills. We finally decided to do the things we thought were good for his health and live every day as if it were the last. We made every morning a celebration of life and enjoyed the day the best we could. His heart did not improve but he made his peace with God and looked at life as a gift. He was still miserable but his attitude was tolerable. He was sick for eleven years.
My full time job was to keep his mind and body busy so that he didn't dwell on his health. We bought him a computer and he began to learn to use it. He filled many days just trying to learn to do something on the computer. It worked. During the long winter days when we couldn't get out in the cold, I would get out those old pictures that the Martin family had collected, hand him a snapshot and say, “Tell me a story about this picture “ and he would begin. He would talk and I would ask him questions. I would write down what he said in outline form on the computer while he told me about the pictures. Then while he slept, I wrote the stories in detail. I would read them over to him and he would correct and change things until I had them just like he wanted them to be. Some days he felt so bad he wouldn'talk. He said “I can't think.” There was a time when he quit for several weeks. Sometimes, I thought he had told all the stories that he was going to tell. We still had a big stack of pictures that we hadn't talked about. He wouldn't look at them. He said, “I don't want to talk.”Days went by, weeks turned into months and he would not look at the pictures. He learned to use the computer and loved the graphic designs that were on it. He spent his days making letterheads for stationary and personal greeting cards. Many days he wouldn't remember what he learned the day before, but he kept going back and learning it over. He didn't seem to mind if he had to learn it over many times. As long as his mind was busy with tasks he didn't pay attention to his pain and suffering.
I have no idea what happened but after several months, he picked up the pictures again and began to tell me stories about them. For the rest of the time he lived, he filled his mind with stories about his family. It seemed to bring him comfort. Those days were very precious to us and I think maybe they were some of the best times we had spent in our married life. We started every day with a prayer in our hearts that he had been spared for another day. This may seem like a sad story to you, but it wasn't, because we didn't let it be. We were sad about his heart problems but we were glad that we had started this project together and had enjoyed the days we spent in the memories of his family.
We didn't get through all of the pictures before he died, but we got some wonderful stories. These aren't stories that happened to other people, they happened to your mothers and fathers. Your hearts are going to be touched. I hope you shed a few tears. I know you will feel the love he had for his parents and his brothers and sisters.
All the Martin children are dead. There are three daughters in law living, Edna Lusk Martin, wife of Clyde Martin, Lola Fowler Martin, wife of Cortis Martin and my self, Jodean McGuffin Martin, wife of Kenneth Martin.
It took many years to get this much written down for the generations who will come after us. We know that there are great stories in each family that we did not tell. I hope that some of you will become storytellers and journalist and write down your experiences and share them with us.
I'd like to think that you will sit and read the stories and then re-read the stories again and again. You will tell your children and grandchildren about the old Grandparents and Great Grandparents. In time, some of you will want to go back to Horse Branch to see if you can find the old house. Don't put it off too long.
