Martha Gwendolyn Redding Thum

Eulogy delivered at the La Jolla United Methodist Church, October 17, 2026.

Projected above you see a poem. Martha left this poem by her keyboard. She enjoins us not to weep at her grave. True to character, Martha was thinking about how we might feel, feeling herself a carefree butterfly.

I’m Will Brownsberger, one of Martha’s sons-in-law. I think that to appreciate Martha’s connectedness and her caring nature, it helps to know a little about the caring family and community that she grew up in.

Martha Gwendolyn Redding Thum was born in San Diego in April 1934 and grew up in Julian, a small San Diego mountain town with a gold rush history. By the time she was growing up there it was mostly agricultural — ranchers and farmers. 

Her parents were pillars of that community. Her father Ray was Superintendent of the Julian Union School District. A school district with only 5 teachers when he started, but by land area the largest school district in California, 1500 square miles, bigger than Rhode Island – some kids came in by horseback and stayed the week in town. 

As a school superintendent, he had to be a good politician – the district supported four tax elections during his tenure, all carrying by better than 2 to 1.

He was the parliamentarian of the Julian Chamber of Commerce and attended the annual installation of officers at the chamber for 57 years consecutively. He was a charter and life member of both the Julian Historical Society and the Lions Club. He belonged to the Soil Conservation District and to the Julian Community Baptist Church for 60 years. In 1990, the educational community honored him by naming the new continuation High School after him. 

He was a proud American and understood his local service in national context – in 1951 at the height of the cold war he let the local paper know that he had attended a school administrators conference themed “Education Meets Democracy’s Challenge.” He had an easy sense of humor joking later in life that “School principals never die, they just lose their faculties.”

Martha’s mother Mildred was also a member of the Chamber of Commerce and the Historical Society. And she was president of the Julian Women’s Club and chair of the Julian Wildflower show. 

Ray stepped down as superintendent in 1964 when he was only 60 and he and Mildred enjoyed a long retirement, living into their 90s together, growing apples and pears and serving their beloved community.

Martha’s sister Eileen was only 14 months older than Martha and the sisters shared the same room and the same clothes growing up. They biked together, tap danced together, had sleep overs together, rode Jenny the donkey together, roller skated into town together. When Martha was 4 they visited the San Diego Zoo together (a trip that made the Ramona Sentinel social news column in 1938). 

When they were 10 and 11, their mother Mildred fell ill and, following medical advice of the time, took to strict bed rest for 6 months. The sisters assumed her housekeeping duties together. They’d seen their mother sprinkle soap on the floor and wash it. They tried with a bit too much soap – so much that they just couldn’t rinse the suds off with any amount of water and finally had to push the suds out the door with towels. They also cared for their two-year old brother Bob. Eileen jested that Bob was lucky to survive.

In high school, Eileen and Martha wore uniform blue skirts and white blouses. They had three skirts between them. When Eileen went off to Redlands for college, Martha was “skirt-wealthy.” Eileen was homesick without Martha until a year later when Martha followed her to Redlands and once again roomed with her. They were also both sorority sisters in Alpha Theta Phi. Of note: Martha’s granddaughter Carly followed Martha to Redlands and the same sorority 60 years later.

Martha and Eileen knew the same boys growing up. Martha was a freshman in high school when Willie Tellam was a senior. Martha and Willie once took 13 consecutive rides together on the Roller Coaster at Belmont Park in San Diego. If that’s not love, I’m not sure what is, but it was Eileen who married Willie. Of course, Martha was maid of honor at the wedding. Willie, who was attending Claremont Men’s College at the time, preferred ranching to school and after the marriage, Eileen and Willie both left school and started raising boys. From the beginning, Martha was a wonderful aunt, always remembering the chocolate advent calendars.

Rewinding a few years, Martha was a social star in high school. As a 17-year-old brunet, she was the Julian Apple Day Queen for the September 1951 harvest. She was crowned at the Queen’s Street Dance in Julian, and was recrowned on television by Sig Ruman. You may or may not know Sig, but he had at that time appeared in 87 movies and was making a new picture with Gregory Peck. He was a big man with a German accent, often cast as a German villain. 

As Apple Day Queen, Martha and her five princesses presided over the Apple Day festivities, which drew a record 35,000 visitors that year. In the climactic Apple Day parade, she rode with her princesses in a huge red Apple float.

Later in her senior year, she served as candle lighter for the installation of the Honored Queen of The Ramona Bethel Number 198 International Order of Job’s Daughters of the Masonic Temple. 

Sought after not only for her beauty and outgoing personality, she was also a very good student, winning a Bank of America cup in Science and Mathematics as a high school senior in 1952. 

For a highly intelligent, adventurous, and caring young woman in the 50s, nursing seemed the way to go. In later life she wrote: “I can’t remember when I didn’t want to be a nurse. Florence Nightengale, Clara Barton, and of course Cherry Ames, were my heroines.” 

After two years of pre-nursing school at Redlands she took a big summer trip to Europe and then matriculated in September 1954 to the Stanford School of Nursing where she received her Bachelor of Science Degree in 1957. She then went to work at Stanford Hospital.

It was during her years at Stanford that she met Lawrence Charles Thum, then a young doctor in training. In a reunion letter sharing memories of Stanford, she recalled “meeting Larry on Men’s Medical on his first day as a new intern (sigh!).” He left Stanford before she did, heading to Texas as a physician Captain in the Army. They courted by mail for much of a year before committing to marriage by letter. The box of their almost daily courtship letters lay by her bedside on the day she died. 

They married in Julian in August 1957 and built a life together — four children in four years, moves from Texas to New York and back to Texas before settling in La Jolla. Through it all, Martha anchored the family, caring, caring, caring, and caring. 

When Martha’s second child, Margaret was born prematurely, nurses whisked her away to intensive care and asked Martha what she would like to have done with the body. Martha rejected the question and ultimately nursed Margaret through rapid weight gain to full good health.

Martha was always there — showing up for all the league games for all her children, volunteering, helping out. She even drove John to his gigs as a teenage bass player; even more impressive she picked him up and drove him home.

What was most amazing about her caring presence as a parent and community member while her kids were in school is that she was working nights as a nurse. She’d work the night shift, send her kids off to school and then catch a few winks before getting back up to greet them when they came home.

As a surgical nurse, she saw all kinds of tragedies. While she generally didn’t talk about work, she did find occasions to judiciously share stories about motorcycle accidents with her sons. Neither John nor David ever became bikers.

Something had to give with that night schedule and she eventually shifted to day work as a school nurse, more compatible with parenting. She worked for the San Diego City Schools for eighteen years. As a school nurse, she cared for kids in every kind of need across all the neighborhoods of San Diego. I am going to share Martha’s brief letter to the editor in 1991, when San Diego was considering deep budget cuts and proposed cutting school nursing in half:

Hear that awareness: About half of the kids in the district do not have health insurance.

In every community she entered, at every gathering, she did more than her share — whether it was bringing her chicken chile up to family in Julian, or raising funds to improve Camp Wolahi for the Camp Fire Girls. Neighborhood kids knew her as their favorite stop on Halloween night — dressed as a nurse, pouring fresh Julian apple cider that slaked their thirst. 

And we can be sure that she was similarly a favorite contributor in all of her professional circles.

I met her in 1984 when she was 50, a year before Carolyn and I were married. I loved Martha from the beginning and I loved Julian and the whole family and mountain world that Carolyn connected me to. Martha’s welcome smile made me feel right at home.

You have some of granddaughter Katie’s poems in the program. Her words:

I loved arriving in San Diego. The first breath of it was always the beach and night flowers, drifting through the warm breeze as if they’d been waiting for us. Then came you and Grandad, pulling up to gather us in, everyone squeezing into the Buick.

There was always, always plenty of room.

Then your house.

Stepping out into the perfume of your garden through the front door. The soft tick of the clock. The hush of your soft carpet beneath our feet. A bowl overflowing with fresh California fruit, in the center of the kitchen table, surrounded by the spinney chairs.

Our favorite little toys and memories pulled out for our enjoyment, saved for the moment we walked through the door.

You kept every souvenir cup from the zoo and wrote each of our names on them.

We always had a permanent place in your house.

And in your heart.

Magic.

Thank you, Katie, for those words.

Martha cared for all of her children, their husbands and wives, the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren with real love. Each of us felt we had a special connection to her.

Her central life connection was to her husband Larry. Her love for Larry endured for 67 years from her first sight of him (intern, “sigh!”) to his death in her arms. She devoted herself to his care in his several years of decline. 

When he died in 2023 we read in this church Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Without taking one tiny thing away from Larry, Martha’s enduring love was as much about who she was as it was about who he was. She was by nature a loving person.

When he passed three years ago, she grieved deeply, but over the past year was beginning to come back into herself. Everyone at White Sands knew her. And she made it a point to know them. So many took the time to let her family know how many loved her at White Sands. And she was attending to her health and fitness in a disciplined way.

When she took her last fall, she was looking forward to so much. Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren arriving that day, her children to come soon, her friends, and family plans.

In her final hours in the hospital her character was on full display. When her granddaughter Katie arrived to the hospital, her gracious question was: “How was your flight?” Always thinking of others. And by the way, she had already written and laid out a check to pay for that flight and wrapped a birthday gift her great-granddaughter.

Her granddaughter Kelsey witnessed her final negotiations with the health care system. The Emergency Room doctor explained to Kelsey that they had seen a big brain bleed on the cat scan and asked about Martha in the third person: “Does she want to be on a ventilator?” Kelsey directed the question to Martha who although still fully conscious did not immediately answer. The doctor asked Martha the question again. No response. “Martha can you hear me. . . . Martha you have to answer.” Finally Martha explained: “I’m just trying to make sure I’m thinking clearly. . . . No. . . . No. I don’t want to be on a ventilator.”

She knew exactly what the brain bleed meant. The toughness. The clarity. The courage to make her own life-ending decision: a tough and reflective mind, along with a delightful personality and warm heart.

Carolyn and I slept in her bedroom when we got to La Jolla a little too late. On her bedside table was a stack of books and articles. The title of the top book was “And then she was gone” and the title of the article below it was “A good death.”

We can be happy for her as we mourn. She died as she lived, with dignity, courage, humor, love, and surrounded by family. 

I believe that Martha had high hopes and good wishes for each of us. Among them, perhaps was this: that we each should forever remember her loving all of us.