James Frederick Martin, III, of Mount Pleasant, SC, died peacefully in his sleep early Friday morning, February 27, 2026. He was 88 years old.

He was preceded in death by his father, James Frederick Martin, Jr., and his mother, Evelyn Juanita Nichols, and his two brothers, Frank Anthony Martin (“Tony”) and Jack H. Martin.

He is survived by his wife of 62 years, Gail Webber Martin of Mount Pleasant, SC, and five daughters: Victoria Martin Grimme of Oxford, PA; Amy Rebecca Martin of Vienna, VA; Allison Martin Widders of Mount Pleasant, SC; Susan Elaine Martin of Boston, MA; and Katharine Rachel Barnes of Parkton, MD.

He is also survived by seven grandchildren: Sophia Helen Bartolone, age 20; Ava Madeleine Bartolone, age 19; Henry Erik Grimme, age 18; Dylan James Bartolone, age 16; Lana Juliet Bartolone, age 14; Ella Grace Widders, age 12; and Abigail Evelyn Barnes, age 6. The sons-in-law who also survive him are Timothy Miles Grimme, David Steven Bartolone, John Carlyle Widders, and James Christopher Barnes.

Jim was born on July 18, 1937, in Jackson, TN, and grew up in Memphis, TN. As a child, he adored the game of football. In 1955 he graduated from Elizabeth Messick High School, where he saw Elvis Presley perform in his gymnasium but couldn’t hear anything because of all the screaming. He went on to matriculate at Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis), where he studied Spanish and was an Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps cadet. He graduated in 1959 with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish.

After graduation he served in the United States Air Force and for a time was stationed at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, eventually achieving the rank of captain. It was while in the Air Force that he traveled and developed a desire for knowledge about other cultures.

In his 20s, while working for the federal government in Maryland, he earned a master’s degree in linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. In 1963, after learning of Jim’s excessive neatness (all of his pencils were sharpened and pointing in the same direction, everything was in right angles on his desk), and after Gail commented to a colleague that she’d “hate to be his wife,” he asked her out and she said yes. Two weeks later, they were engaged; and four months later, on February 8, 1964, in Gloucester, MA, they were married.

The happy couple lived in College Park, MD, in Forestville, MD, and eventually moved to Adamstown, MD, where they raised their five daughters in a rural community in sight of the Blue Ridge Mountains. (No, they weren’t trying to have a boy.)

After leaving the Air Force, Jim worked briefly at the National Trust & Savings Bank, but the lion’s share of his career was spent at NUS Corporation in Rockville, MD, where he worked as a technical writer.

But a life is about more than just schools attended and degrees earned and jobs worked.

Some of his daughters’ earliest memories are of their father mowing their half-acre of lawn, walking around the house with a fly swatter, and practicing karate (pronounced correctly in Japanese: kah-rah-teh) in the backyard. His daughters can still see him there in their mind’s eye, practicing kihon and kata, grunting “hai,” with the swing set and cornfield in the background.

His daughters also remember him taking each of them out on “dates,” to dinner and a movie usually, so that he could spend time individually with each of them.

He adored films and often took his girls out to the movies (“Star Wars” in 1977, “The Black Stallion” in 1979, “Popeye” in 1980, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in 1981), to the community swimming pool (with Laffy Taffy afterward), for ice cream at the Dairy Delite on Route 40, and to parks and playgrounds in and around Frederick, MD. He taught them all to ride bicycles in the cul-de-sac in front of their house. And he was the parent designated to take his girls to the ER for stitches when necessary, which was often.

He attended his daughters’ makeshift plays on the backyard deck, band or orchestra concerts, art shows, theatrical performances, skating competitions. He gloried in his daughters’ accomplishments.

In their family home in Maryland, he would preside over trivia competitions at the dinner table, peppering his daughters with questions about history or geography. He invented a game called “Introducing”: from his seat at the head of the table, he would announce “Introducing, an airplane!” and his daughters would careen around the dining room and kitchen, their arms outstretched like airplanes.

Every Christmas tree bought at the Maine Tree Farm in Buckeystown, MD, he proclaimed to be “the best Christmas tree we’ve ever had.” And every Christmas Eve he read his daughters The Night Before Christmas in his melodic baritone.

He was above all a polymath and an autodidact, a bibliophile and a logophile and a grammarian, a man of extensive learning and erudition.

His girls never wanted to ask for his help with their homework, because he could expound for hours on a vast array of subjects. He was particularly gifted with languages, teaching himself both Mandarin and Arabic, and was an amateur historian. He had an expansive knowledge of feudal Japan, indigenous American history, the Civil War, and World War II. His vocabulary was exhaustive, and his daughters often had to look up three or four words after receiving his emails, most of which started with “Ladies,…” and many of which used words one didn’t often hear in everyday parlance, words like “herewith.” He was well-traveled (how many people do you know who have been to Yap?) and a collector; his prize possession was a tsuba, a Samurai sword guard, which he showed to any potential son-in-law who crossed his threshold.

An enthusiast for classic films and musicals, he made his daughters watch and re-watch many with him on Sunday afternoons when Washington ‘s professional football team wasn’t playing. His favorite movie was “Shane” (1953). He loved to hear the song “Sentimental Journey,” because it was his father’s favorite.

He once told his family that he felt his father had “visited” him from the “other side,” because he smelled rubber on his bath towel and his father had worked at a Goodyear tire factory.

Jim was an incredible swing dancer and had a deep, rich singing voice, often breaking out into the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, for no apparent reason. He was famous for being able to recite one of Prince Hamlet’s soliloquies, “To be or not to be,” as if he were underwater, and he did it with aplomb and to much fanfare at company picnics.

A private celebration of life and an interment will be held at a later date in Frederick County, MD. In lieu of flowers, the family encourages donations to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital in Memphis, TN. Donations can be made in Jim’s name at https://www.stjude.org/donate.