Barbara Simon Martin

Barbara Laurie Simon Martin, born in Mobile on April 22, 1922, passed away on December 6, 2021. She was 99 years old, about four months shy of her 100th birthday. She was a lifelong resident of Mobile.

She was preceded in death by Otto H. Simon (father, born in Freiburg, Germany) and Vivian Moody Simon (mother, born in Langsdale, Mississippi), Otto E. Simon (brother), Martha Simon Henderson (sister), Vesta Simon Evans (sister), Otto M. Simon (nephew), Wanda Lee Simon (niece), William H. Martin (first husband) and James Lamar Lewis (second husband).

She is survived by her daughters Laura L. Martin (Bruce Helbig) and Marcia K. Martin (Glen Arnsdorff); her 95 year old sister Katherine E. Simon; and nieces, nephews, grandnieces, and grandnephews.

Visitation will be on Saturday, December 11, 2021 from 10:00am to 11:30am, at Pine Crest Funeral Home and Cemetery. A short service will be held in the Pine Crest Chapel at 11:30am, immediately followed by a luncheon reception at the facility.

Active Pallbearers: Bruce Helbig, Glen Arnsdorff, Robert Henderson, Mark Henderson, Pat Clarke, and Tim Waltman. Honorary Pallbearers: Mackenzie Helbig and Griffin Wells.

Like her sisters, Barbara (“Bobbie” to her family and close friends) was a career woman, and held a number of positions in business typically given to men in those days. All the Simon siblings went to work soon after graduation from Murphy High School, due to the loss of their father when they were only teenagers.

During WWII, Barbara was employed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and volunteered for two years as a Red Cross nurse’s aide.

After her tenure with the Corps of Engineers, she went to work for the GM&O Railroad, where she was appointed the youngest, and first female, Chief Clerk. And in a turnabout for traditional roles at that time, her secretary was a young man. After 15 years, she left the GM&O in 1958 to have children.

Barbara returned to the working world more than a decade later, when she was hired in 1972 as the Executive Assistant to the Dean of the College of Education at the University of South Alabama. In 1999, she retired from the university after 28 years, at the well-past-typical-retirement-age of 77.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Barbara taught the Confirmation Class at Trinity Episcopal Church. She had been raised a Methodist, but when she married Bill Martin, she became an Episcopalian and began attending his church, Trinity.

The Martin children attended St. Paul’s Episcopal School in the 1970s, so when Bill Martin died in 1985, Barbara became a member of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. She remained a member of St. Paul’s, well into her later years when she was no longer able to attend services.

Barbara was multi-talented in the arts. An accomplished musician, she was a Chorus Member with the Mobile Opera for eight years when she was in her twenties. She was also an excellent pianist, and studied church organ as well. She was blessed with a great ear for music, and could pick out songs on the piano that she had heard on the radio or on record albums. She enjoyed playing piano all her life, even in her final years.

Her love of photography resulted in a massive volume of photographs of nature and her family, documenting 70+ decades of family history.

Also a poet and memoirist, she left behind numerous poems, and a diary in which she daily documented her life’s events since the birth of her first child.

In the 1990s, Barbara's daughters requested that she write a memoir of her own childhood and youth. She complied, and in 2017, her daughters published her memoir, titled Legacy. The book was unveiled at her 95th birthday celebration at the Richards DAR House, where a young Bobbie had lived for a year while she attended Barton Academy. Her grandmother and great aunt were renting the house from Mr. Richards at the time (circa 1935), while they were searching for a home of their own after moving to Mobile from Mississippi.

A remarkable woman who led a very full life, Barbara is fondly remembered for her love of babies, her appreciation of and love for nature and wildlife, her artistic talents, her sense of humor, and her positive outlook on life.