Martha Garrison

Martha Garrison (1929-2025)

Martha Garrison died on April 7, 2025, her ninety-six birthday, at the Arbor in Galloway Ridge, the Pittsboro, North Carolina, retirement home in which she had lived with her husband Gene from 2002 until his death in 2017. She was born Martha Cayton on her family’s farm a few miles outside Washburn, Texas, in 1929, and spent her early years in different towns in the Southwest, where her mother, a schoolteacher, found work teaching in local schools. At West Texas State University, where Martha received a degree in secondary education, she met and married Gene Garrison, also a student at West Texas State, and the two settled into lives as teachers, until her husband changed vocation in 1952, becoming a Baptist minister and enrolling in the Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.

By this time the couple had two children, a boy and a girl, and the family lived in Grapevine, Texas, where Gene pastored the Memorial Baptist Church as he earned his first seminary degree. The next several years saw the family serving in Baptist Churches in Oklahoma—First Baptist, Hobart, and First Baptist, Altus—again in Texas, at the First Baptist Church of El Paso, and then, from 1972 to 1996, at the First Baptist Church in Oklahoma City. As Gene pastored, Martha served in a number of capacities within their churches while also teaching school. By the time she retired from teaching in 1972 she had earned a Master’s Degree in Education from Southwestern Oklahoma State University and had taught in grade schools, middle schools, and in college at the University of Texas at El Paso. Upon the family’s move to Oklahoma City, Martha received certification from the Oklahoma City University School of Law and served as Probate Officer for the law firm of McKenny, Stringer, and Webster in downtown Oklahoma City.

Following Gene’s retirement in 1996, he and Martha moved to Cary, North Carolina, to live near their daughter, Christy, who had established a career in computer software with the SAS Institute in Cary. Gene came out of retirement to pastor the First Baptist Church of Butner, North Carolina, for five years, until ill health required him to retire for good. The couple lived the remainder of their lives at Galloway Ridge. Martha is survived by her two children, Christy and Steve, two grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

All who knew her benefited from Martha’s kindness, her strength, and her practical wisdom. She will be missed.

A memorial service will be held at a later date.

Condolences may be made at www.donaldsonfunerals.com

Donaldson Funeral Home & Crematory is honored to serve the Garrison family.