Marjorie Martin

Marjorie Ann Billmeier Martin, loving mother and dedicated servant to her church and community, died October 28, 2025, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at age 101. The daughter of Carl and Elsie (Schartow) Billmeier, she was born July 9, 1924, in Saginaw, Michigan. She grew up there with her siblings and a large extended family on both her mother’s and father’s side.

While Marge was attending Saginaw High School, World War II started, and she always recalled the shocked reaction of her family when Pearl Harbor was bombed Dec. 7, 1941. She attended the University of Michigan with a major in classical studies, focusing on Latin, with the thought that she would help most effectively after the war as a teacher. During college, she regularly rolled bandages for the Red Cross. After graduating from college, she was hired at Arthur Hill High School in Saginaw to teach Latin, Spanish and English.

At a 1948 post-graduate summer session at the University of Wisconsin, she met a young medical intern, Dr. Charles Martin, from Stillwater, Oklahoma. After her return to Saginaw to teach, the couple became engaged, and they married at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Saginaw in 1949.

They moved to Oklahoma City for his medical residency. Charles had been in the Army in WWII while at the same time finishing his medical training at the University of Oklahoma. The Army had discharged him after WWII, but not long afterward the Korean War began and he reenlisted. At about the same time, their first child, Mary Ann, was born in Oklahoma City. Marge and Mary Ann lived with Marge’s parents in Saginaw during Charles’s overseas duty. Marge had their second child, Kay, in Saginaw.

When Charles’s overseas duty ended the family was assigned to Fort Hood, Texas. In 1952, after his discharge, they moved to Oklahoma. Sons David and Ken were born in Oklahoma City and Perry, respectively.

Charles was a Perry doctor for 39 years and then the medical director at Green Valley Nursing Home for an additional 10 years.

In Perry, Marjorie played the organ for Christ Lutheran services from 1966 to 2014, cowrote a church history, volunteered as librarian, and was active in the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League.

She was a charter member of Stagecoach Community Theatre at its 1975 formation and was a board member, historian and photographer. Marjorie joined the Ladies Tuesday Afternoon Club in 1953 and was a member for more than 60 years.

Learning about the history of Perry and Oklahoma was one of her main interests, and she enjoyed being in the Oklahoma Historical Society, Cherokee Strip Historical Society and Noble County Genealogical Society.

She loved being outdoors in childhood summers at her family’s Saginaw Bay cottage where she learned to swim. Later, she liked to go swimming in the Perry pool as much as her kids did. Baseball was the team sport she liked best. In her later years she spoke of playing baseball with her brother and the neighborhood kids and about being an avid Detroit Tigers fan. She also kept score for her sons’ youth baseball teams.

She lavished attention on the flower beds at her home and taught her children the names of Oklahoma birds. She kept up with the health advice of the day and put up a No Smoking sign on the door of the house years before smoking indoors was prohibited elsewhere.

Highly organized, she was a diligent keeper of records and scrapbooks. She carefully logged family documents and spent hours labeling new and old photos. She led Cub Scouts and Camp Fire girls. In the 1970s, she and Charles hosted Gabriel de Carvalho Jacintho, a Rotary Club foreign exchange student, who maintained ties with them for many years.

She was named Perry Daily Journal Woman of the Year in 1976 and Beta Sigma Phi Woman of the year in 1991. She and Charles were Cherokee Strip parade marshals in 2007. The Perry Carnegie Library Reading Garden was dedicated to them in 2010.

She was preceded in death by her parents, husband, brother Charles, and sister Elise Rossow, and her husband’s siblings, James Martin and Mary Arceneaux.

She is survived by daughters and spouses, Mary Ann and Gordon Matzke and Kay and Tom McCarthy, and sons and spouses David Martin and Barbara Thomas, and Ken and Mary Martin; grandchildren and spouses Nicholas Matzke and Phoebe Hardefeldt, Amanda and Aramis VanSandt, Neil and Leah McCarthy, Mary McCarthy and Brad Walton, Hugh and Lauren McCarthy, Katie Martin, Ross Martin, Ben Martin, Meredith and Chris Stackonis, Jonathan and Gabriale Martin, and Peterson Martin; and great-grandchildren George and Joan VanSandt; Freya, Clementine, and Darcy Matzke; Lucy, Valerie, Everett, and Louis McCarthy; and Sophie Stackonis; many beloved Martin and Billmeier nieces and nephews; special friend Debby Kime Knott of Perry; and LWML friends and other cherished Perry friends.

Friends are welcome to stop by Brown-Dugger Funeral Home of Perry on Monday, November 3, 2025, from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. to sign her book. If you would like to have a time of fellowship with the family, they will be present at the funeral home on (11/3) Monday from 5p.m. until 7p.m. Refreshments will be served.

Funeral services will be at Christ Lutheran Church at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 4, followed by interment at Grace Hill Cemetery, Perry. Services are under the direction of Brown-Dugger Funeral Home.

Memorials may be made in her honor to the Christ Lutheran Church General Fund