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Service award honoree spent her career at HSU
Three other Hardin-Simmons University alumni will receive the Keeter Award on Friday.
Elizabeth (Cohorn) Abernathy: 1971 graduate is the executive director of the Region VII Education Service Center in Kilgore. She has spent 41 years in education, including 23 as a school administrator.
Charles Davis: 1984 graduate works in the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer. He currently works in management in the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv.
Robert C. Moates: 1951 graduate worked for 20 years as an executive with Palmer Broadcasting Co., the predecessor of Comcast Cable, in Naples, Fla. After his retirement in 1987, he became a real estate agent. He also has served as president of the Naples Chamber of Commerce.
Contributed photo Billie Shirley Martin was elected as the faculty president in 1978, the first woman at HSU to do so, and was selected by her peers as Faculty Member of the Year in 1993.
When Billie Shirley Martin came to Hardin-Simmons University in 1944 as a freshman from Anson, she had no idea the campus was to become her home for more than half her life.
“The campus looked like a pasture,” said Martin, who will receive the John J. Keeter Jr. Alumni Service Award during HSU’s homecoming at 6:30 p.m. Friday in the Johnson Building on the HSU campus. “Still, I thought it was a very attractive campus, even though it wasn’t anything like it is today.”
Except for a few years as a coach and physical education teacher in Lamesa after her graduation in 1948, Martin spent the rest of her professional career at HSU, teaching and coaching.
“When Dr. (Otho) Polk called from the P.E. department and offered me a job, I thought that it sounded exciting,” Martin said. “I never thought I would stay there the rest of my life, but I enjoyed it so much. There was something about Hardin-Simmons that I didn’t find anywhere else.”
Linda Powell was a member of the Tri Phi Social Club, which Martin served as sponsor, from 1969-71 and she remembered Martin as a professor with a genuine concern for her students.
“She just always greeted everyone not only with a smile but with a concern for how they were doing,” Powell said. “I never heard anyone ever say anything except that she was the neatest lady.”
Powell was at HSU when Billie Shirley married J.G. Martin, chairman of HSU’s Music Education and Church Music departments.
“That was so exciting,” Powell said. “She was this tall, thin coach and he was a music person who was short and round. They just adored each other.”
The Martins retired in 1993. J.G. Martin died in September 2008. Powell’s husband, Jud, a financial planner for Edward D. Jones in Abilene, said the Martins were a sterling example of how to prepare for retirement years.
“They’ve been remarkable stewards of what God has blessed them with,” he said. “They gave to the school when they were teaching there, and they’ve continued to give even more after they retired. They were hard workers and, boy, did they love their kids (students).”
The Martins set up the J.G. and Billie Martin Scholarship for music students, which Martin still says excites her when she meets the students who receive the scholarship.
Other than meeting her husband, Martin said a big thrill was being elected as the faculty president in 1978, the first woman at HSU to do so, and being selected by her peers as Faculty Member of the Year in 1993, the year she retired.
Martin, who turned 86 last month, remains active with HSU, serving as program vice president for the retired teachers and taking in basketball games.
“She’s the youngest 86-year-old I know,” Jud Powell said.
Her energy level, she believes, comes from being active all her life.
“I’m healthy, and I’m happy,” she said. “Those are two of the best things God can bless you with.”
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