In memoriam Abner Martin

My Dad passed away last week. Friends and family sent him to his eternal rest yesterday with a service in his country church, filled with lusty hymn singing and thoughtful words. I’d like to share my brother Kevin’s eulogy, reprinted here verbatim. Rest in Peace, Abner Martin.

Our family thanks every one for your attendance here today and for the many expressions of sympathy and tributes to dad that we have received.
My Father suggested that I might, possibly make a few remarks on his life at his funeral. He had strong ideas about funerals; that they should be for worship of God, a meditation on the meaning of our lives and the life beyond and for sure he didn’t want his funeral to be a celebrity roast. Many of you will know him from his musical life; I believe he wanted me to talk mostly about the other sides of his life. So I will speak of his health, family, farming and faith and a few facts you may not know.
I speak of his health because it seemed to his children that poor health played a large part of Dad’s life and character development. He suffered Crohn’s disease from young adulthood and in debilitating periods he was often hospitalized. The treatment of heavy doses of steroids was nearly as bad as the disease. When he was 50 he had most of his intestine removed. Nine years later he suffered a major heart attack. And in this last year and a half he experienced declining function of his liver and kidney. So many of his accomplishments were achieved while experiencing a lot of physical and emotional pain; he had a significant amount of courage and a strong will. We children will acknowledge that he was very strong willed. Many people have said that Dad was very engaging in conversation. I think we found many of his conversations to be quite one-sided. I should say that for most of his last 20 years he was in surprising good health and enjoyed it with great appreciation.
He was born at his parents Annanias and Susannah’s farm which is just kitty corner to the church here. If you would make the short walk to Lakeshore Optimist Park you’ll see the foundation of the Martin farmhouse re-asserting itself and you can find the exact spot where Abner, his brothers and sisters, and his father before him, were born.
His family, until the time of Abner’s birth, were members of the Old Order Mennonites that met at Martin’s Meeting House. Noteworthy, the last 5 years that they attended there, Annanias drove his car to church when all other members drove horses; an illustration of the rebellious side of this branch of the Martin family. They attended St. Jacobs Mennonite Church thereafter and he had opportunities to develop music leadership skills; as a song leader and a junior choir director when he was 15. But his first foray into conducting was actually at Martin’s schoolhouse where, in grade 2, he lobbied hard to be given the baton to lead the school rhythm band.
A story to illustrate what it was like to grow up in the Martin family in that era. We children first heard this story from other relatives about 20 years ago; Dad confirmed the details and told it himself with increasing relish and embellishment in more recent years. One wintery Saturday afternoon when Annanias and Susannah had gone to town, Lloyd, 14, and Abner, 8, decided to harness a Holstein heifer to a sleigh and train her to pull them about. It didn’t go so well for Lloyd and Abner; control was soon lost, and the heifer dashed about the yard, over the barn hill, and towards a partly open stable door. At this point Abner could see what was coming and bailed out, while Lloyd tried valiantly to rein in the beast. The heifer sped through the door; Lloyd and the sleigh did not. When their parents returned from town, and Annanias stood, surveying the wreckage, with great mystification, Abner ran forth to say, “You can’t blame this all on Lloyd. This was the heifer’s fault”.
Annanias and Susannah sent their 3 youngest children to Rockway Mennonite High School where Abner participated in activities including male quartet, mixed octet and choirs. A precocious lad, he was also served as president of the student council while in grade10. Of course, the most important accomplishment of his Rockway years was meeting and falling in love with our mother, Shirley. Since those early days she has always been his greatest supporter and advocate, the strength that held our family together , in good times and the worse times and especially in sickness and in health.
After Rockway, not yet 18, he headed to Goshen College in Indiana. It made news back home in Waterloo County when he was selected, in his freshman year, as the baritone soloist with the Elkhart Symphony in Brahms’s Requiem. After 2 years at Goshen, Love called him home and he and Shirley were married in July, 1955. That same year he had an idea to start a choir that would sing sacred music not “usually covered “in the Ontario Mennonite churches. Shirley suggested they could be called Menno Singers. He led the choir while completing degrees at University of Toronto. Always in a hurry it seems, by the time he was 24 he had 2 children, a high school teaching job and had purchased a house in Tillsonburg. A few years later it was back to Waterloo to teach at Waterloo Collegiate and then after his parent’s farm had been sold, but before it was developed into Lakeshore Village North, to the home farm.
My father and I farmed together for about 40 years; we started when I was 7. We would buy beef calves from the West and feed them over the autumn and winter months in the old dairy barn and sell them in the spring. During those summers Abner studied for a master’s degree at Eastman School of Music in Rochester NY. Importantly, among those western calves were a few straw-colored animals who always grew faster than the others; these calves were cross-bred Charolais, a breed from France and rare in Eastern Canada. After doing careful research, in 1968 we bought our first 4 purebred Charolais cows.
One of his professors at Eastman, George Proctor, had become head of Music at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick; he invited Abner to apply for a position there. Abner interviewed, accepted the job offer, and bought a house, sight unseen by Mom and moved his family east. We arrived on a cold, grey day in August with ominous clouds building above the vast Tantramar marshes. How could our father have torn us away from bucolic Waterloo County to grow up in this desolate swampland? Audible sobs were heard from three corners of our automobile. (Even the Charolais cows had been allowed to stay behind in Waterloo).
And yet those were 4 of the best years of our family experience. Every member seemed to thrive, with both parents conducting choirs and being involved in the university and wider community and the children developing their own musical, scholastic and athletic talents with camping and hiking trips to explore the geography and folklore of the Maritimes. And too, there was a long line of friends and relatives from Ontario who came for a visit or dropped in while passing through.
During our Maritime sojourn we can also see another example of his boundless courage; in the summer of 1972 Dad was studying with some eminent conductors in Europe and took our entire family with him for 3 months. We visited the art
galleries, concert halls, museums, castles and cathedrals. We travelled with an early version of ‘Tourmagination’ and learned about our Anabaptist roots. We were even wined and dined by the French Association of Charolais breeders who must have been under the mistaken impression we were there to buy some expensive French cattle.
In 1973, Abner decided if he was ever to realize his childhood dream of raising Holsteins it was time to make another move, this time to a beautiful farm near Atwood Ontario. It helped that he had a captive workforce of teenagers. During the next 23 years he took great satisfaction from working the land and raising dairy cows; our family expanded with children-in –law and 3 grandchildren. Dad took delight in coaching his grandkids to show their 4H calves and supporting another generation of musical talent. The early years on the farm were also the Mennonite Mass Choir years; Dad had come back from the east with a great vision for spreading good choral practice throughout the community. A favourite memory; after the concerts, the huge choirs and camaraderie and post-concert celebrations we would make our way home and Dad would head out to the barn in his formal conducting wear to make a last check on the cows. Due to his health problems he gave up leadership of Menno Singers and Mass choir n 1979. His professional musical accomplishments were done at age 44.
Finally, a few words about Abner’s Christian faith. Over the years he held membership in Mennonite churches at St. Jacobs, Listowel and Waterloo North. He valued the community he experienced in each place. A memory from Listowel; he was having one of his bouts with Crohn’s and 17 members of the congregation showed up with tractors and plows to complete our fall plowing in one morning. We attended the United church in Sackville and later Dad grew to really appreciate the ritual of the Anglo/Catholic tradition and the Matins service here. He marked as important accomplishments collaborations with several Catholic churches and in presenting Ernest Bloch’s Jewish Sacred Service. He served the wider Mennonite church as a member of the Bi-national Commission on Christian Education in the 60’s, and trained up a good many congregational song leaders. He taught Sunday School lessons. All indications of a man of faith and a respecter of tradition and authority even if he could be somewhat rebellious. In his view, if you wanted to challenge tradition and authority you should make sure your arguments were sound and solid.
In his personal faith though he could be inscrutable and oblique. In family discussions he might say, “I’m not telling you what you have to believe”, and when pressed, often by Cori, he might give examples of how the church’s understanding of a faith concept had changed and evolved, and finally when there was no way out he could say,” I’ll keep with those who search for Truth and be careful of those who have found it”. In his last months he thought much about faith and doubt versus certainty; at the same time he become somewhat mystical in his understanding and in his last few days he received a transcendent experience that pointed to a beautiful adventure yet to come. He died with a peaceful spirit.
Sometimes in our teenage years our family would gather around the piano and sing together. We were a little taken aback when Abner introduced the hymn “Sometimes a Light Surprises” to us and said that it was a fair statement of his faith. The writer William Cowper was a strong evangelical believer and like our dad suffered from serious health issues. Cowper himself had periods of deep depression and grave doubt about his own salvation. Dad could identify with the idea of discovering faith and healing while singing and that music could express truth beyond the meaning of words. The remaining verses of the hymn speak to other aspects of spiritual life and the flocks and herds mentioned in verse 4 are understood to be Charolais or Holsteins. We’ll be singing this hymn according to the previous red Mennonite Hymnal version; the one dad taught us.
As we sing this hymn together you might imagine the Abner Martin family gathered together in our little, lonely Mennonite outpost beside the great salt water marsh in New Brunswick learning our father’s faith. But, remember to watch your phrasing, diction, and breathing.
Thank you again for being here today.