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Mary Alice Martin, 93-year-old resident of Austin, Texas since 2009 and a resident of Woodward, Oklahoma for 50 years, died Sunday, September 14, 2014 in Austin. A Celebration of Life will be at the First United Methodist Church of Woodward, Oklahoma on Saturday, October 11, 2014 at 1:30 p.m. Interment of her ashes will be at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia next spring.
Mary Alice Duncan was born on August 22, 1921 in Chickasha, Oklahoma. Her father John Hill Duncan was a graduate of the University of Oklahoma and her mother Jennie Alice Duncan nee Staker was a graduate of the Oklahoma College of Women. Her parents met as schoolteachers in Chickasha. The family moved to Altus, Oklahoma where her father managed cotton gins and grain businesses in Altus and Childress, Texas.
Mary Alice began playing the piano at age 6 and her parents gave her a sterling silver Haynes flute when she was 12 years old. These gifts of music resulted in her becoming a life-long musician, music teacher, band director and steward of music to hundreds. After graduating from Altus High School, Mary Alice went to college in Stillwater Oklahoma and obtained her Bachelors in Fine Arts at Oklahoma A & M (now Oklahoma State University) in 1942. Then, after teaching junior high bands in Little Rock, Arkansas from 1942 to 1947, she moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan to study and earn a Masters in Fine Arts Degree from the University of Michigan in 1948.
She met Andrew Franklin Martin, Jr. of Stillwater, Oklahoma in 1938 where he played the French horn and she played the flute in the Oklahoma A & M Band. The band director occasionally scolded Mary Alice for turning around in her chair on the front row to look at that horn player. The beginning of World War II, following the attacks on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, interrupted every American's lives as it did Mary Alice's and Frank's relationship.
Mary Alice is survived by her sons Andy Martin and wife Patty, Gary Martin and wife Barbara, all of Austin, Texas, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, her sisters in law Jeanne Duncan, of Surfside Beach, SC and Frances Martin Lumly of Las Vegas, NV, and many beloved nieces, nephews and friends.
Preceding her in death were her husband Major Andrew F. Martin, Jr., her mother Jennie Alice Duncan, her father John Hill Duncan, her stepmother Sarah Ethel Duncan, her sister Hildegarde Kuhn and her brother John Hill Duncan, Jr.
Those wishing to donate funds in Mary Alice's memory may do so to a charity of the donor's choice, to the music programs of the First United Methodist Church of Woodward, 1111 Downs Ave., Woodward, OK 73801 or to the P.E.O. Chapter AA in Woodward in care of Helen Lynch.
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