The memories we all have of the elegant, tall, graceful Mary Lou Poteet Martin as a choral director at Warren High School are many, and the memories will span generations in the almost 30 plus years she taught public schools in Bradley County.
The Arkansas Choral Association is seeking Mary Lou Martin to be placed in the inaugural class of a Hall of Fame soon. The induction ceremony has delayed until after this summer. (see inset story on how you can help contribute to this honor).
But this is an honor only, at present, seeking information for Mary Lou’s induction. So I’ll mostly write of her in this Pastime, as difficult as that may be as this couple was truly inseparable, in their influence on generations of Warren kids.
It started for me, on a hot, August afternoon on the stage in the old WHS auditorium for a fifth-period (right after lunch) class - junior high boys choir. As a 7th grader, I walked from the old Junior High (site of the present day post office) to the high school, so unsure of where I was to be and what way going to happen in my first choir class.
One brave soul in our small troupe, was sitting down at the dooms-day black painted upright piano, terribly pecking out “chopsticks,” while all the rest of us typical 7th grade boys, were into anything but organization. Chaos reigned, until a loud, autocratic voice, from a tall, thin woman rushing up the aisle of the auditorium shouted out: “Get off that piano, line up and get quiet.”
Mary Lou Martin had entered the room. She was accompanied by a brand new student teacher from Arkansas A&M (now UA-Monticello) the late Rev. Wallace Ferguson, struggling to match her stride for stride, up the aisle.
And so it began for me. Mary Lou Martin lined us up, heard our voices, calmed our fidgetiness and ended my constant foot-tapping as music played to begin a six-year journey as a member of the choral program at Warren High School.
The long thin arms and delicate fingers directed us with the elegance of a swan and the immediate deftness of a falcon darting across the skies. She had an ear for anyone out of tune She showed you what to listen for, from the musical score or from your fellow choir members, to get in tune and stay on key (and in tune) during a performance.
Many of us could not “read” music. None of us knew if we were tenors or baritones or a bass. Knowing the, rhythms, beat and even the definition(s) of music terms, were non-other than a brand new foreign language would soon be made oh so familiar by her constant teaching methods of music, yet, but also of life itself.
It was her desire to teach more than just “casual” choir tunes to this rabble of country kids. We were to learn some of the world’s most everlasting and beautiful choral music and how to sing it.
The Latin language, found in many of these classics, Mary Lou Martin, taught, was I found out later in college, was indeed superb. She coaxed this herd of children of South Arkansas into proper pronunciation of this foreign tongue, by simply explaining what the word was in our own vernacular. Even today, I spy a Latin phrase in a book or on a building half-way around the globe and both the definition of that word and a chorus erupts in my brain.
I never skipped a choral practice, missed a rehearsal or dodged an after school practice over all my junior high and senior high years. I skipped lots of other classes of every ilk, but never one of Mary Lou’s classes.
True learning about music, life, and the fine arts were taught here day in and day out. She knew all of the new radio tunes we kids listened to, she knew our TV shows and acutely she cared about us – often more than any other teachers, coaches and counselors in the schools. Each spring she would sit down at her piano and write out the most popular “pop” songs for a spring concert. She didn’t wait on the sheet music to make its way from Wallack Music Company in Monticello or the Little Rock Music Company stocks; she transcribed all four choral parts, words and lyrics for us to sing.
She, paid only a pittance for an average Arkansas school teacher’s salary, gave so much more too each and every one of her students. She took in sewing, embroidery, monograming and alterations, of which she was a well-regarded seamstress. She oversaw and ran the football concession stands for the band program and made some killer “flaming hot dill” pickles that were scrumptious.
In the early 70's, when the state choir festival was still in Hot Springs, the mixed chorus performed Haydn's "The Heavens are Telling" and after receiving unanimous 1st divisions, the WHS mixed chorus performed it in the evening for the entire assembly.
With a spectacularly talented team of Jana Durmon, Johnny McBee, and Tommy McBee and LoraNelle Johnson, I think, sang solos in that performance. Other names simply escape me today.
But the forcefulness of that musical number did not escape the cadre of choral directors from around the state, many of whom shore-horned in their best students to hear this repeat performance, directed by the Martins.
The rumor back then in the late 1960s, 1970s or 1980s were if your group preceded the WHS groups you stood a good chance at a high ranking. Follow the Singing Lumberjacks and you were doomed to a lower ranking from the judges.
After graduation and my arrival at Henderson State College in faraway Arkadelphia, I was summoned to the choral department there asking if I wanted to add choral music to my schedule. I’ll never forget the director and his words: “I’ll add anyone who has been through Mother Mary Lou Martin’s program without an audition. If you were in her choir, well, you know what you are doing.”And here this Pastime has barely scratched the surface of the Mary Lou Martin we all know and certainly a fraction of all she meant to the Warren High Choral programs.
That gift of her teaching is a Pastime, even today, that fills my head with songs I’ll never forget.
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