Marty was my first cousin and the big brother I didn't have, being the oldest child in my family. He was extremely generous with his time. He would take me with him often when he went out with his friends at night, sometimes climbing the fence at Mt St Joseph's outdoor pool and swimming, or sneaking into a quarry to swim. I was 4 years younger and he treated me the same as he did his close friends.
I remember a time we took off in his '57 Fury for Ocean City and slept on the beach around 100th St (when it was just sand dunes). Another time, on a dark summer night, we drove out Park Heights Ave near Greenspring Valley Rd., laid back on the hood, and watched the Leonid Meteor Showers light up the sky.
When Marty saw that I was learning guitar at 15, he taught me a finger picking pattern that I still use today. I can say that he had a great musical influence on me early in my development.
He was kind, generous, intelligent, and wise. And although I hadn't seen him in an extended period of time, I will miss him.

Danny O'Neal

I knew Marty for 75 almost 76 years. He was my beloved nephew since Iwas 14 years old.
My sister Christina married when she was 18 years old.
She had Marty when she was 19 years old.
Being the first grandchild in our family, he was loved very much. Marty was like a little brother and I managed to take him plenty of places with my teenage friends. They also loved him like their own.
One time we took him down a place called “Cottage Grove” on the Bay. There was a Pavilion with a juke box and we were dancing, all of the sudden Marty went missing. We all scattered to find him. But this little devil wasn’t far——he was sitting in the sand playing with a little girl—-even then he liked girls
I was so upset and put him on my knew and spanked him for
roaming away
Years later at Mt St Joe, his English Brother told the class to write an essay.
When it was read to the class the Brother said I should have had a spanking not him.
Marty was the first in both families to go to College and make a success teaching. He then met his beautiful wife Peggy
We all will miss him and hope to be with again.
Aunt Rita

P.S
There are many more stories I could tell!!!!!!

Celebrating Marty’s life...

I am hoping that many of Marty’s relatives, friends, colleagues and even some of his former students will post comments on this blog. I’d like to start by introducing Marty’s immediate family members as they , along with many others were very important to him. Marty and I were so pleased when our son Jeff moved to Maine in 2011 and subsequently married our lovely daughter-in -law Jodie, giving us 3 amazing grandchildren. Marlin is the oldest and will be graduating from Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, Maine this June. Marty loved talking to Marlin about his education and it appears that Marlin knows everything he needs to know about being a captain of a big ship or anything related to ships and maritime issues. Marty always said he hoped that Marlin would one day be a bay pilot in the Chesapeake Bay.
Jack is the second grandson and is attending the University of Maine in Orono (My alma mater). One of Jack’s specialties is that he is a jumper. He holds the New England Championship for pole vaulting, long jumping , and hurtle jumping. Marty loved attending the events where he could watch Jack in action and he bragged to all who know him about his skills in jumping. He is now a member of UMO’s track team. He also is an amazing photographer and we are fortunate to have a large photo of Mt Katahdin hanging on our wall, taken on one of his trips up the mountain.
Clara, aged 14, has followed her brothers in her own footsteps at Belfast High School this year! She is very busy with many activities, starting the fall season as a budding soccer player. With two “empty” days this year because of the covid schedule, she has taken a job two days a week at a local farm ; she loves animals and is fearless in whatever situation she finds herself in as she cares for the goats, horses, chickens, and ducks. She also has been very active since age 10 in the Searsport Congregational Church where Marty and I were married as well as Jeff andJodie.

Marty and I were also fortunate to be god parents to XiXi and Ben Smith. XiXi is in a graduate program at Towson University and Ben is a freshman at Hereford High School. Ben is a great athlete and recently, upon Marty’s suggestion, has taken up golf; Marty was thrilled and offered lots of armchair advice; he actually had an opportunity to go to the driving range with Ben last year.

The rest of the Maryland Stouts and the Maine Aldens include : Marty’s Aunt Rita, sister Joy, brother Mark, sister Tina, nephews VJ, Tony, Nick, nieces Maria, Brenda, Nassa. The Maine relatives include sister-in-law Martha, sister-in-law Mary, nephews Zach, Caleb, Brenden, nieces Maggie, Ame, Ember, Josie, Nora.
I know that Marty often talked about all these folks so I wanted to be sure you knew who they were.

While many of you may reminisce about various incidents/events, I would like to share some of his endearing traits which some of you may not know about.

First, though, it’s no secret to anyone that Marty was an extrovert; he talked to everyone...people he knew, people he didn’t know, anyone who came into his presence; he would always tell about the details of our lives. Once he was having a procedure at the hospital and I stepped out; when I returned after it was done , the nurse said to me, “He did just fine, he talked the whole time and now I know everything there is to know about you!” My sister Mary often said: “Marty would talk to a post if it’d respond.”

So, little known fact: Marty could, at the drop of a hat, say the Lord’s Prayer in old English which is like a foreign language to most people. He learned it in college and he had it in his head always,...no notes or anything to prompt him. He often recited it to our young friends when he was talking to them about language.

Marty also knew every plot, theme, characters of any book he’d ever read and could converse on them all with no hesitation. His two most favorite books were Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain and he regularly talked about those. He also was always game to engage in an intellectual conversation about any of Shakespeare’s plays.

In his daily life, right up to the end, we always played cards; at first it was gin rummy, then during a long snowy winter we went to canasta, and most recently it was Kings in the Corner which he loved to play with CLara if I wasn’t around. We played many, many games of scrabble over the years which he usually won. Additionally, Marty was a cribbage player and taught many young people in our life how to play. He was a fan of the southern rules because his dad had taught him those; he tried to share those rules with people in Maine who weren’t sure they were interested in southern rules. He once lost a game to Jodie on our family camping trip and before that one to XIXI the first time he taught her to play , but otherwise, if they were playing southern rules, he was usually the winner; it should be noted, however, that if he and Mary played “Maine” rules, she most always won !.

Marty loved music and played the guitar, banjo, mandolin, and harmonica. He was always happy when he had the chance to play with his cousin Danny and long time friends, Jim Smith, Bob Ackerman or Nolan Simon; he also loved to play with our son Jeff and Marty always commented that Jeff was so much better at the music than he was.

As we were both English teachers originally, we loved nothing better than to talk about writing and editing other people’s writing. We talked about words that we loved all the time. One of Marty’s favorite words was “peripatetic” and he often called me “peripatetic Peg”, much to my mother’s concern. She thought he was saying “pathetic Peg”. He quickly let her know that it wasn’t “pathetic” that he was saying, but “peripatetic” meaning “one who walks habitually and extensively.” This was in reference to my hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Other favorite words of his included : foppish, histrionics, pompous, commodious, taciturn, amorphous and the word he created and used extensively: spizerinctum (cheap, tacky decorations).
He did crossword puzzles, the very difficult ones, every day, perhaps 6 or 7 at least and always in a black pen. Many thanks to Doug Behrens who along with my mother, my sister Mary and a friend in Maine, for sending a constant supply of crossword puzzles from The NY Times and other papers.

Marty was a prolific writer of poetry; in the past 20 years, he has written hundreds of pieces of poetry...many to me. He gave up buying greeting cards because they just didn’t say what he wanted to say. Just this past year he finally finished a book he was writing : an authorized biography of his friend Bob Ackerman titled : “Baltimore Blue Blood. “ Unfortunately , he did not live to see the actual published version, but after 4 years of writing, rewriting, editing, he was happy to have finished it. For those of you who don’t know Bob Ackerman, he was Marty’s first friend; they were 5 years old when they started to play together. So, you can probably imagine that many of the adventures in the book included Marty.

In Maine, Marty’s almost full-time job was being President of the Swan Lake Association; he took the job when no one wanted it and over a period of ten years, he created a vital force of membership, starting with 10 members and then at the end of the summer this past year had a membership of 150. He created a number of important programs designed to maintain the water quality of the lake, as well as a community who came together regularly to learn about the lake and its surroundings. This year the town of Swanville dedicated the annual town report to Marty in gratitude to him for all his efforts that have improved the lake and lake experiences over the years.

These are just a few of the things that I wanted you to know about Marty
and I do hope others will share an experience you have had with him.

Peggy Stout 1/16/2021’