Norma Stillwell Martin was born and raised in the Panama Canal Zone, where her father was superintendent of the canal’s Locks Division. One of her favorite memories from her college years was experiencing snow for the first time. “She was a proud Penn Stater and Chi Omega sister her entire life,” says her son Robert, who visited State College in the 1970s, when his mother pointed out her initials scratched into a Corner Room booth from when she was a student in the late 1930s.

Martin ’41 Lib returned to the Canal Zone after college, where she met her husband, Lt. Lee McNeer Martin of the U.S. Army West Virginia National Guard, which had been called up to defend the canal in the beginning of World War II. The couple had four children and moved according to Lee’s military assignments, which included two stints in Japan. “She was always very sunny, very optimistic,” Robert says of his mother. “She very rarely had anything disparaging to say about anybody.”

She spent her life volunteering in areas where they lived, efforts that increased after Lee died unexpectedly in 1981. By then she was immersed in philanthropic efforts to better Loudoun County, Va., where she impacted no fewer than 13 organizations and nonprofits, including an Alzheimer’s respite center, the county hospital, the library, the animal care and control board, and the American Red Cross. “She was never working a paid job,” Robert says, “but she was always working within the societies and communities to help the local people and economy.”

Martin (ΧΩ) died Feb. 1, 2024, in Leesburg, Va. She was 104 and is survived by sons Lee Jr., Dennis, and Robert, daughter Normalee, four grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. —RR