Audrey Martyn, Classification Talk
Posted by Vi Hughes on Mar 30, 2017
This Tuesday we heard a classification talk from one of our newest members, Audrey Martyn, pictured. Audrey’s sponsor was Hans Pilz. Audrey is a native Edmontonian, being born and raised in Edmonton. She was the oldest of five children, with four younger brothers. She grew up in Belgravia and later Windsor Park, and attendee the U of A where she studied Education, with a double major in Languages and Psychology. Her first teaching job was in the inner city, where she had one incident in her first month, where she had to take a knife away from a grade five student. The next year she moved to a school on the south side, where she taught in several schools for many, many years. She finished her career teaching at Ross Shepherd High School. She spoke of how teaching has changed over the years, and the challenges of dealing with children from all types of backgrounds.
Audrey is married with two grown children and two grandchildren. She and her husband have travelled all over northern Canada, camping and trailering. Her husband is an avid hunter and fisherman. She says that she keeps busy as the family socialite, doing most of the family entertaining. She remarked how her brothers can’t seem to find the kitchen.
Since the 1970’s she has been a volunteer with the Edmonton Symphony, doing all kinds of work for them. She worked with them through some interesting times building the Winspear Center, and during their move from the Jubilee Auditorium to the Winspear. The Edmonton Symphony is the fifth largest symphony in Canada, and as a board representative of them, she sometimes felt like she did not fit in with the other high society symphony reps from other larger North American symphonies. She had some interesting stories to tell about her high fashion encounters with some of these ladies.
Audrey has also become a strong advocate for the CNIB and also for the organ transplant community in Edmonton, and Alberta. She herself required a cornea transplant several years ago, so she has first hand experience of ho difficult it can be for people who are waiting for a suitable organ. She was able to advocate to government the need for a better system to encourage and track organs for transplant, and also the funding needed to support this system. We have a need for about six to seven hundred eyes and about four hundred other transplant organs per year in Alberta alone. At the time she had her transplants done, there was only one surgeon doing corneal transplants, and he was doing them all privately after hours. Thankfully that has now changed, due in part to her lobbying.
Audrey also volunteers at Arch Greenhouses, one of the groups that our Rotary club supports. She looks forward to sharing in our rotary activities, and also to having the opportunity to share her causes with us, and we look forward to getting to know her better.
Audrey Martyn