We held a memorial for Tom Martin on Saturday, June 20, 2009 at Wisconsin Memorial Park in Brookfield.

The United States Marine Fox Company – Milwaukee I & I performed military honors for Tom by folding the U.S. Flag and playing Taps.

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Thomas R. Martin, 76, of Sun City Center, Florida, passed away on April 13, 2009.  He served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War and was a member of the United Community Church.  He was member of the American Legion Alonzo Cudworth Post #23 and the Korean Knights in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  He graduated From Whitefish Bay High School in 1951 and attended the Milwaukee School of Engineering.

Tom was preceded in death by his parents, R.O. and Beatrice (nee Holstein) Martin, a brother, Ralph Martin, a sister, Diane Plettner and his baby grandson, Kyle Owen Martin.  Survivors include his wife, Hazel (nee Semke), four children, Laura Martin, Lisa (Steve) Balistreri, William (Sue) Martin, and Timm (Theresa) Martin, a brother, Michael (Jeanne) Martin, a sister-in-law, Sylvia (Arthur) Menz, eight grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 2 pm Saturday, April 25, 2009 at the United Community Church, 1501 La Jolla Avenue, Sun City Center, Florida.  A memorial service will be held in Milwaukee, WI at a later date.  In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the Sun City Center LifePath Hospice Resource Center, 3725 Upper Creek Drive, Ruskin, FL 33573, or the United Community Church Scholarship Fund, 1501 La Jolla Avenue, Sun City Center, FL 33573.

Or you can send cash to Hazel Martin.  Though she is too proud to ask for money, she is facing enormous hospital and medical bills.  Please help her out if possible.

See the Obituary and Sign the Guestbook

This is one tough marine!  Tom fell and broke his hip and had to undergo surgery.  Like many challenges before, this surgery was expected to kill him.  But Tom continued to defy death, and like the Energizer bunny that keeps on going, Tom survived once again.  He asked his granddaughter Heather to snap his photo to show the world that “I’m alive!”

We are happy to report that Tom has returned home from the hospital and nursing home, where he was rehabilitating after his bout with pneumonia.  Hopefully Tom will be writing here again soon.

From Tom’s son, Timm:

Tom is in the hospital with pneumonia in both lungs.  We are praying for his recovery.

Today is his birthday.  We wish he was enjoying his 76th birthday at home, or better yet, sailing the open blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico, as he loved to do in days gone by.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!  WE LOVE YOU!!

Congress that is!  They lie to us, the world and the Congressional Record.  And they passed a rule to make it legal.  For example:

Someone introduces a bill to raise the tax on Tommies ice cream bar by 5 cents.  A Representative stands on the Podium and expounds on how unfair this would be to add a burden on little Tommy.  Then the Representative turns right around and rewrites this little speech to "give it to the little bastard, raise the tax to 15 cents to teach Tommy some responsibility," and this is what is written into the Congressional Record.

Don’t you think that what the Representative says on the podium is what should go into the Congressional Record?  I do.

Read this ruling in the paper quite a long time ago.

Rehab is the key word these days.

Politicians, movie stars, entertainers etc.  Rehab is the word.

Fine.  Let them serve rehab, then throw them in jail for a year, no early releases.

Here is my real angel that God sent from heaven: Hazel, my wife of 55 years, a registered nurse.

Flash back to the end of April 2008 when South Bay Hospital said I was critical and wouldn’t live past noon.  I won’t give you all the gory details, but Hazel and the hospital somehow pulled me through, and here I sit today.

Don’t know how long, but I will try to make the most of what I have left.

I joined the Marine Corps on March 26, 1953 for a 3-year tour.  On December 5th, 1953 (my 21st birthday, by the way) I landed in Korea and was assigned to the 1st Marine Div. FMF, 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment, combat zone.  The Corps was playing the numbers game then: 4 points a month on line, 2 points a month in reserve, 36 points and you go home.  After 8-1/2 months they changed the rotation, and I spent 15 months in the combat zone.

The uniform of the day was the Flak Jacket (they were heavy then), a loaded M1 rifle, 45 caliber pistol, bayonet, canteen and cartridge belt.  When we wanted to dress up we wore our steel helmets.  We shaved and bathed out of those helmets.

I spent 2 winters in Korea.  It got very cold there.  Once after a long time in they brought up portable showers.  We each got a 5 minute hot shower in which we thought we died and went to heaven.

Now the nitty-gritty.  I guess the Armistice meant no more Divisional clashes.  Some of this is from a 50 year memory.

We were in the Chorwon Valley, ran from Siberia to Southern Korea on the North Side of Imjin River between the Freedom and Liberty Bridges some 38,000 meters apart.  The river ran east to west maybe 50 to 100 yards wide.  On one flank was the British Black Watch, and on the other the Turkish Army and Australian Regular Army. 

You never forget the sound of a bullet cutting the air past your ear.  Some nights we could hear the big ones headed North overhead.  105’s and 155’s.  As long as they were headed north, we were happy.

What were we doing there?

Right in front of us were one half million Chinese and Regular North Korean Troops.  If they jumped off, we were supposed to hold them long enough for the Eighth Army to blow the bridges.

OH YEAH!

We figured our survival rate at about 3 seconds.  Hence the term:

DEAD MAN WALKING

Remember when Clinton ran for and was elected to his second term, the media sprouted about the $Trillions of dollars his policies produced for the economy.

He was elected, but where did these trillions go?

Not a peep from the media.

Now that’s real government accountability.