Martha Lee Roark

Martha Roark, 81, died on February 27, 2024, of complications of Alzheimer's. She spent the last two weeks of her life in Emory University Hospital's hospice unit, where she received skillful and compassionate care. She was born in Batavia, New York, to William E. Wire and Hilma Pond Wire and grew up in Richmond, California. She and her husband of 60 years, James L. Roark, attended the same schools and church and became high school sweethearts. After earning a bachelor's degree in English and a master's in teaching from the University of California, Davis, she taught for the next 50 years, the last 30 at the Paideia School in Atlanta. She taught third and fourth grades and loved every minute of it.

Paideia has a tradition of giving long-time retiring faculty a chair with an inscription. Martha's read:

"Imagination, Independence, and Inspiration." Well-chosen words, indeed. An admiring parent once told Jim, "You know, don't you, that she is a legend."

She was a joyful traveler, always up for an adventure. In the early 1960s she and her husband spent three years in the Peace Corps in Nigeria. In the 1970s, they spent a year at the University of Nairobi, Kenya,, where Jim was a Fulbright lecturer. In 2001-2002, she joined Jim for a year at the University of Cambridge in England, where he was a visiting professor. Throughout her life she enjoyed summer trips to Europe and innumerable places in North America.

Martha is survived by her beloved family: her husband, Jim; her sister Peggy Sperry and her husband, Roger; her sons, Michael and his wife, Nancy Zuckerbrod, and Ben and his partner, Aledra Rovetto; and her grandchildren, Olivia Zuckerbrod Roark, Jonah Zuckerbrod Roark, and Elias Zuckerbrod Roark. She will be missed by the large village she helped to create.