John Eugene Martin

John Eugene Martin is included among the family members profiled on this website because at the time of his conception, his mother, Magdlen Pauline Gilmore, was married to Robert Earle Martin, and there is no available definitive proof that John was not Earle’s son. That said, it is in fact likely that John was the product of Magdlen’s infidelity. Certainly Earle’s reaction to the pregnancy suggests he believed he had been cuckolded. He refused to raise John and likewise ceased having any voluntary contact with Madglen. Alas, this also means he abandoned his son Robert Charles Martin, who was eleven or twelve years old at the time of Earle’s departure. The precise timing is not quite clear. Earle could have left during the pregnancy and never even laid eyes on John. It is certain that he was no longer on scene by the time John was six months old.

Magdlen apparently maintained the stance in public that she had been a faithful wife and that John was Earle’s son. If John was a biological son of some other man, that man’s identity remains a mystery. John used the surname Martin throughout life.

Because of the awkward circumstances, much of the information reflected in this biography is derived from public sources. Those have been sufficient to paint a portrait of a life, but it is possible that portrait is missing something essential. For example, there is no outward sign that John ever married, and there is the impression he was shy and not socially gifted -- and perhaps even had a learning disability. Yet perhaps none of those things is true.

John was born 1 May 1931 in Champaign, Champaign County, IL. He does not appear to have ever lived anywhere but the metropolitan area associated with Champaign and its sister city of Urbana. For the vast majority of those years, he was based in a neighborhood of Urbana just east of the large University of Illinois campus. For much of his childhood -- perhaps all of it aside from his infancy -- his home was at 810 W. Green Street in Urbana, where the household consisted not only of his mother and brother Robert, but also his maternal grandparents Charles and Sarah Gilmore, along with his mother’s spinster sister, Lenore Gilmore. Magdlen never married again after parting ways with Earle, but to say John was “raised by a single mother” would be an over-simplified way of describing his circumstances. He had plenty of oversight, and an ample number of people to look after him. His deprivation was not in the category of role models, it was the lack of peers. Robert was eleven years older, and so John grew up almost as an only child. This was of course even more the case from age ten onward, because Robert wed Marge McMurray in the summer of 1941 and established his own home with her.

John graduated from Urbana High School as part of the Class of 1949. Though the Korean War broke out when he was of prime draft age, he does not appear to have served in the military. He became a library clerk at the university. This was a long-term job. It’s not known whether he remained an employee of the university all the way to retirement, but it seems likely.

Through his twenties and thirties John did not establish himself in a home of his own. He did go through a change of address, though. By the mid-1950s the Gilmore clan was no longer at 810 W. Green, but at 408 W. Springfield in the same neighborhood of Urbana. Gradually the household emptied out. Grandmother Sarah passed away in 1951, Aunt Lenore in 1958, and Grandfather Charles in 1963. Finally in 1970, Magdlen perished as well. Aide from the final four days spent at Burnahm City Hospital, her address was still 408 W. Springfield, and her obituary shows John was still fixed in place. Whether he continued to live there one he was alone is not known. He did not have a wife or children by that point. As mentioned above, he appears to have been a lifelong bachelor.

John died 16 October 2010 at Champaign-Urbana Regional Rehabilitation Center, a nursing home located in Savoy, a suburb just to the south of Champaign-Urbana proper. Judging by the ratings and reviews available on the internet, this was not the sort of facility an ailing old man would choose as his final residence if he possessed the means to have something better, or enjoyed a bond with someone willing to shoulder the burden of looking out for him in some other, less institutional setting.

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