Sunday, November 23, 2014
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Vivian Martin preached the importance of education, so her family and supporters thought a scholarship in her name was a fitting way to honor her while helping others.
“Every young person she met, if she thought they were someone who should go to school, she would tell them, ‘You need to go to school,’” said Donna James of Campbell, one of Martin’s daughters. “She just thought that going to college could make your life better, and she was so right.”
Martin, 67, a real estate agent, was murdered in September 2010, when she went to show a Nelson Avenue house. Grant Cooper and Robert Brooks pleaded guilty in the crime and were sentenced last month to 29 years and life in prison, respectively.
The Youngstown- Warren Realtist Association, of which Martin was a member, presents Party for a Purpose from 7 to 11 p.m. Saturday at St. Michael Social Hall in Youngstown. Tickets are $20.
The event, dubbed “the ’70s bash of the year,” is a fundraiser for the Vivian Martin Scholarship, for nontraditional Youngstown State University students studying business. Attendees are encouraged to wear 1970s attire.
Martin was a freshman in high school when she got pregnant with James. Back then, pregnant girls weren’t permitted to go to school so Martin dropped out.
While James and her sister were young, Martin went back and finished high school at night, then earned an associate’s degree at YSU. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Wilberforce University in Wilberforce, Ohio, and her master’s in organizational leadership, at Geneva College in Western Pennsylvania.
She also owned her own home and spoke about the importance of home ownership to anyone who would listen. The single mother worked at General Motors in Lordstown while attending school and raising her daughters.
“She believed education was so important,” James said.
James, who along with her mother owned and operated Essence Realty, was at a friend’s house when she got a call from the realty’s answering service, telling her a house the company had for sale was on fire.
“As soon as I got there and saw the fire and saw my mother’s car, I knew something was wrong,” she said. “It just felt like something ripped my heart right out of my body.”
Family members learned later that Martin, a two-time cancer survivor, had been murdered, strangled in a robbery.
James still struggles with it.
“Anybody who knows anything about real estate agents knows they do not carry money,” she said.
One of the men was receiving money from the military, James said.
“What makes a person go from years of serving their country to doing something like this?” she said.
More than four years passed between the time of the murder and resolution of the case. That length of time exacerbated the family’s ordeal.
“It made it a heck of a lot worse,” James said.
Last June, Judge James Evans of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court recused himself from the case because he planned to retire. James doesn’t understand why the judge’s retirement plans caused the case to lag for four years.
“I work at a state institution, I work at Youngstown State University. ... If I chose that I was going to retire, YSU is not going to let me make up four years of not doing any work to decide that I’m going to retire,” she said. “So I could not understand why a judge does not have to do their work till they decide when they want to retire.”
Judge Evans retired Oct. 1 and a visiting judge accepted the pleas and sentenced both men. James said she recognizes that not only her family was victimized, the crime victimized the families of both defendants too.
Holidays, which were always spent with her mother, remain difficult. James tries to busy herself, visiting family or spending time with friends.
The Party for a Purpose will offer a similar diversion for her.
It will feature food from the 1970s, dancing, a 50/50 raffle, auction, contests and door prizes. The event is bring your own bottle. Tickets are available by calling James at 330-503-8340, Kathy Hammond at 330-553-2737, Truman Greene at 330-717-7524, Calvin Williamson at 330-207-1547 or Jerome Williams at 330-503-8844. They’ll also be available at the door.
James believes the idea of a scholarship in her name would please her mother too.
“She would be elated more than anything,” she said.