Lois Ann Martin

Dr. Lois Martin, a former associate superintendent for curriculum in the Montgomery County public schools and former head of Maryland Governor Donald Schaefer's commission on excellence in schools, died on October 8. She was 89.

Martin was a popular social studies teacher at Walter Johnson High School starting in the mid-1960's and then head of the social studies department at Albert Einstein High School before moving to the school system central office.

She grew up during the 1930's in a small farm town in Minnesota. She always said that growing up in such circumstances made her a better person for having lived among people from so many walks of life.

One of her regular assignments in her "Problems of the Twentieth Century Class" at Walter Johnson was to ask students to interview their parents about life during the Depression.

She was the only student in her class in Delano (Minnesota) High School who moved more than 50 miles from where she grew up. While an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, she met a British graduate student whom she married in 1951. They were married for 67 years, and they always held hands while walking. One day a few years ago while they were walking through their neighborhood, a car pulled up, the window rolled down, and a man asked, "Do your parents know you are out like this?" It made them smile. She called him her boyfriend to the end.

After her first grandchild was born, she spent many nights after coming home late from school board meetings arranging and rearranging photos of her grandchild in photo albums.

She is survived by her husband of 67 years, L. John Martin, in Bethesda, sons Keith in Chevy Chase and Brian in Sandy Springs, Maryland, three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.