Remembering  Mabel Rose Stone Martin by Carol Yoho March 2003

Anthropologist Margaret Meade believed people are blessed who have had the privilege of knowing their grandparents and their grandchildren. My twenty-three cousins and I have a good start on that blessing.

Born June 5, 1885, Mabel Stone Martin grew up on a farm near Rossville. Mabel was second youngest of four sisters: Lilla, Jessie, Mabel and Ellie. She lost her father, Alanson F. Stone, when she was five. Her mother, Ella Vanette Jackson Stone, struggled to raise her girls and keep the farm. The family was poor. Finally, her mother remarried. The groom was Dave Wells. Soon Mabel had a half-brother from this marriage named Clyde.

She taught school as a young woman and married a young farmer, Cleve Martin, of the Muddy Creek area of Jackson County. They raised nine children. Only two of the nine were girls. All the children had specific chores and duties, but she and her two daughters kept particularly busy feeding and caring for the large Martin family.

While raising children on the farm, Mabel was diagnosed with tuberculoses. The doctor suggested she move to a dryer climate (i.e. Arizona) or go to bed. She decided to go to bed. By the time her illness was diagnosed she was very thin and frail. She was ordered by Doctor Taylor to stay in bed until she raised her weight to 100 pounds--and she was to eat a raw egg each day. She stayed in bed for about one year and she never cared to eat eggs again.

Mabel was a nurturer. She loved to feed people. When retired, she loved to make gifts for her family. She learned to crochet while in her mid-eighties. In her mid-nineties she pieced twenty-two quilts--one for each daughter, daughter-in-law and granddaughter--and won a ribbon on a quilt she entered in the Shawnee County Fair.

She never had a harsh word to say about anyone. She was a storehouse of family news. She filled in details during Cleve's storytelling and she cooked him candlelit dinners-for-two on special occasions and holidays.

Grandma Mabel and Grandpa Cleve retired from the farm and moved to North Topeka in November 1955. The majority of the grandchildren remember Grandma mainly from visiting the little white house on Central Ave.

Grandma, who didn't retire until she was 70, was retired for 33 years.

She had cataract surgery in the 1950s and thereafter wore thick glasses, but she continued working on her sewing crafts. Eventually her eyesight failed to the degree that she could not see television, or do her "handwork."

She loved to fish, but let Grandpa bait her hook. She hated worms and she hated snakes.

She and Grandpa played pitch with friends, but they would never play together as partners.

Grandma loved owls. She had a collection of them, and her family gave her owl bric-a-brac as gifts. She had one real, stuffed owl--a barn owl from the family barn--captured by sons Bill and Bob.

She'd get so excited about the Kansas City Royals baseball games that she made herself turn off the radio and go to bed, so she'd get some sleep. Otherwise, she'd be keyed up all night. Family took her to a Royals game in Kansas City when she was in her 90's.

She quit watching TV news when, at 93, she decided she couldn't do anything to change world news. So she tuned it out.

Grandpa died in 1976, just before their 70th wedding anniversary. Grandma stayed in her own home. Family members looked in on her regularly, and several dedicated live-in housekeepers assisted her over time.

I moved to Wisconsin in 1977 and wrote Grandma a letter each for the next eleven years--over 525 letters.

Grandma was guest-of-honor at a luncheon in her honor at the North Topeka Papan Landing Senior Center on her 99th birthday, and on each birthday after. She enjoyed the attention, and had four yearly plaques on her wall commemorating these events.

She celebrated her 100th birthday--June 5, 1985--with an open house at her home. She wore a powder-blue dress and a white flower corsage. A TV crew came and she was interviewed, appearing on the evening news program.

One morning, shortly after her 103rd birthday, she decided to stay in bed. The family gathered by her bedside--and by evening she was gone.

She was very much loved by her large family, and is still missed by those of us who remember her.