Friends, Social Activities, Travel Keep Martha Poe Young

Inveterate world traveler and RFSA member, Martha Poe, did not let her advanced age (87) keep her from signing up for a trip to South America that included visiting Machu Picchu, lost city of the Incas, the headwaters of the Amazon in the jungles of Ecuador, and retracing the steps of Charles Darwin in the Galapagos. 

Though she had been walking two miles a day previously, she and her co-traveler, Sally Scott, embarked on a six-week conditioning program to prepare themselves for the rigors of the trip. They walked up and down the steps to the top of Mount Bonnell, hiked the rugged the trails of Bright Leaf Park, Laguna Gloria at Mayfield Park and tramped the canyons and creek bottoms of Wild Basin, Turkey Creek and the Austin Nature Center.

Before the arduous fifteen-day tour ended, they had flown to Lima, Peru, boarded a tiny prop airplane to Cuzco, former capital of the Incan empire, and then took a four-hour train ride through spectacular countryside to the base of the mountain containing the ruins. Next it was almost five miles straight up the mountain in a bus negotiating 13 zigzag hairpin curves and ending at the steps leading to the ruins themselves.

Back in "civilization" they took another small plane across the Andes to their Amazon destination. A rickety bus at the airport took them to the wharf where they caught a boat for a 3-hour ride to their modern lodge inAmazon. Even so, they still had to climb three flights of stairs to reach their "green" cabins where electricity was turned off at 10 p.m. every night and they had to sleep under mosquito nets.

Through most of the five days in the Galapagos was spent on a modern launch that could dock at the various islands' wharfs, reaching some islands required transferring to the ship's life boats and then wading to shore. Passengers were furnished wet suits for the ordeal. As the oldest person on the tour, Martha was treated with the respect deserving of her age, and was often carried ashore.

Since that trip, Martha joined RFSA for their tour of Nova Scotia and the Maritime Provinces in Canada and again to Lafayette, LA for a Cajun Mardi Gras.  In fact, she has taken part in almost all RFSA trips over the last six years, declining to participate only in those with destinations she had already visited. 

Traveling is obviously one of the great loves of Martha's life.  She visited her son annually during the five years he lived in Paris.  With his family, they traveled Europe, barging through England one year, touring Germany another. Closer to home, she is a frequent visitor to the boathouse a daughter has in Freeport.  Then there are the yearly trips back home to family reunions in Connecticut.

Though she moved into Westminster Manor retirement home in November 2007, Martha did not give up her active lifestyle. She now goes on all the Westminster day trips, sees every play at the Austin Playhouse at Penn Field, continues to play bridge weekly with a foursome that has been together for decades and regularly takes part in the monthly senior luncheons at her church, First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin. Until she gave up driving about a year ago, she picked up a blind friend to bring to these luncheons.  She also participates in a monthly get together of former UT professors and their spouses.

Martha came to Austin in 1951 with her first husband, Charles Laughton, a professor of Social Work and former associate dean of the School of Social Work.  Together they raised four children: Trisha, who oversees special education for Hays County, Cathy, who works for the American Cancer Society, Becky, a kindergarten teacher for AISD and Stuart, who worked for Schlumberger in Paris before being posted last year to Oslo.  Dr. Laughton died in 1975, and Martha later married Douglas Poe, a mathematics professor at UT.  Martha is now widowed for the second time.

A trained social worker, she worked for ten years for the Texas State Board of Nursing. She has also done a stint as a hostess for the Welcome Wagon, greeting new homeowners in Austin.

A very friendly person, and one who enjoys good health and lives life to the fullest, Martha is very self-effacing, saying she doesn't do anything special.  Yet, by her very example of how to age gracefully, she has raised the bar for the rest of us.