Rudy Martin, a founding faculty member of Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, died on March 5. He was 80 years old.
A native of Fort Worth, Texas, Martin moved to California at the age of 8. He earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of California, Berkeley and a master’s degree at San Francisco State University. He then taught at a California high school and at a community college in California, before taking a faculty post at Washington State University, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1974.
In 1970, Martin was one of 18 founding faculty members at Evergreen State College. During a 27-year career at Evergreen State, Dr. Martin served as academic dean and taught classes in the humanities and the arts. He retired in 1997.
Dr. Martin was the author of the short story collection Seaside Stories (Blue Nile Press, 2010) and the memoir On the Move: A Black Family’s Western Saga (Texas A&M University Press, 2009).
