My Sister Martha 8/8/38 - 12/5/09

Before Martha Cotter Kirkland was a writer, she was a singer with a voice so beautiful that when she gave her first classical recital, her self-centered teenage brother could not hide from public view his tears of awe and pride. The first time he, I, ever realized she could sing in any special way, she performed in her high school talent show: the Edith Piaf international smash hit La Vie En Rose. Martha’s beret was black. Her French was nasal where French is nasal, throaty where French is throaty.

Martha was the only one of my sisters who ever attended the same school at the same time I did. She was in the seventh grade, when I was in the first grade. We walked to and from school together. Many years later, I became the first one in my family to graduate from college, but Martha, married and the mother of two school-age daughters, became the second.

When Martha was only 16 years old, she worked part-time as a telephone operator for Southern Bell. She took weekend and holiday shifts split 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. till 10 p.m. She did her school work and took naps in the operator’s lounge between 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. She rode the bus home late at night. She paid her brother’s little league baseball fee, and when he was a self-centered teenager, she gave him money to take girls on dates to movies and to the Varsity.

Martha and two of her friends sang the McGuire Sisters songs Sincerely and Sugartime on a local TV show. In private, the trio called themselves “The Dripettes.” Martha entered the Miss Atlanta contest. Why not? She was beautiful and talented.



Martha telephoned me one day and informed me she might do some writing. What was the best advice I had ever received? Put your butt in a chair and your fingers on the keyboard, I replied. According to the website Fantastic Fiction, Martha wrote 26 books, including romance, historical, and mystery novels.

She was devoted to our mother. Martha died in her sleep at age 71.