Second Lives
Those of us who have elected to live in this community of the no longer young share one common characteristic: we all lived former lives that involved coping with the seemingly endless challenges that adventure posed. As we adjust to the new challenges of our second life, it might be interesting to learn of those first lives of our current neighbors. However those first lives went, the excitement of the game touched us all. We will check with some neighbors here.
Marty's engagement with life is way, way beyond normal. Maybe it's because in her 90-year slog through this vale of tears she has confronted each medical insult, each family tragedy, each cruel assault on her mental faculties with a courageous grace that can only be accounted for by an extraordinary spiritual will. Through it all she has made the Biblical Job look like little Johnny Sunshine.
Born in Dayton, Oregon in 1931, the family moved to Portland after her father's death in 1940. She attended high school at the Catholic Immaculate Academy. In 1948 Marty spent a day in the sun with friends and came home with what she thought was a sunburn on her back. It wasn't a sunburn, it was encephalitis, a rare virus that is spread by ticks or infected insects or, in some cases, by the body's own immune system. She almost died. It started a lifelong ordeal of recurring seizures that sometimes brought her to death's door.
But she survived and dedicated herself to a life of service. The detailed accounts of her missions would fill volumes but here's a CliffsNotes (remember those college days? Who needs to actually read the books assigned when there are CliffsNotes?) summation of Marty Boettcher's cavalry charge to where there is a need for social adjustment:
After high school and classes at Clackamas Community College and Portland Secretarial School, Marty served on the Clackamas Election Board, eventually becoming chairman.
After the tragic drowning death of her son in Johnson Creek she worked with other volunteers to improve the entire watershed. And it was in that watershed in 1907 that the Bell Rose rail tracks were laid and trains ran on it until the 1990s. The tracks were removed and it became the 36-mile Springwater Trail, all the way from southeast Portland to Boring, Oregon. Marty worked with the organizations that made it all happen.
Perhaps her most dramatic contribution to the national political culture was her role in bringing to life the seminal Oregon vote by mail system. For years Marty worked with other volunteers in low-turnout elections where all day long there would be maybe one or two voters show up. The precinct volunteers' constant complaints to the election board resulted in the creation of what became the Oregon vote by mail system. The fraud-free innovation gave citizens an easy way to choose their political representatives.
From her earliest childhood the Catholic church has been an important influence in her daily life and she takes an active role as a member of the Altar Society at Christ the King Catholic Church in Milwaukie. That is in addition to a dozen more charitable organizations where she is actively involved.
Many residents in this stack of hallways we call home have led remarkable lives, but the harsh truth is, we are not all created equal. In this dangerous jungle where we spend our lives, some seem to have a mysterious inner fire, a resilient core that carries them through the bitter times of adversity as they continue accomplishing grand deeds.
Marty Boettcher is one of those.
