My mother-in-law, Martha Meyer, passed away on December 13 at 99. She was a woman who didn’t have a mean bone in her body. She lived in her second-floor condo until last December.
Photo above: Martha Meyer demolishing Emily’s pumpkin pie about two weeks before she passed.
I met her when I started dating Debbie in 1986. After her husband, Herb, passed away, she accompanied us on quite a few vacations from coast to coast. She contributed financially, allowing us to do more than would have been possible on our family’s budget.
Debbie introduced her to the public relations person at Asbury University, a religious college in Wilmore, KY. Martha’s great uncle loaned the university money to rebuild after the 1905 fire destroyed most of the campus. He was a mason and helped with the construction of the new buildings – all of which still stand over 100 years later (photo below). The university honored her as a matriarch and treated her like a queen. She had an “aw shucks” attitude, overwhelmed by the attention.
Photo above: Martha looking at scrapbook with Debbie and Asbury folks look on.
Photo above: “Grandpa” Askin’s (Martha’s great uncle) with a masonry trowel in hand, standing before an Asbury College building he helped build in about 1913.