June 2023

Martha Rouin, long time resident of Hammondsport, N.Y., passed away peacefully on Memorial Day, May 19, 2023, at Cayuga Medical Center. She was a World War II veteran, as well as a loving wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. Born in 1920 in Jamaica Plain, Mass. (Boston area) to Dr. Raymond Titus and Mary Titus, she attended Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill and went on to study at Smith College in North Hampton, where she received a Bachelors in Art History in 1943. Following college, she entered the Woman’s Army Corps and was stationed at Fort Monmouth, N.J. She was in charge of setting up and managing a nursing unit at Fort Monmouth, where she served until the end of the war effort. After the war, she met and married Marcel “Bud” Rouin in New York City. Bud, a Hammondsport native, also served in the war, as a half-track gunner with the Third Armored Division, landing in France following the D-Day invasion, and fighting the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge. Martha and Bud moved to Hammondsport in 1966, where they raised their two sons, both Navy Veterans. Martha worked as a social worker for Steuben County - in which capacity she served hundreds of children and families - and Bud was a portrait, landscape and wildlife artist. Martha was also a talented artist in her own right, best known for her clever, and often humorous, sketches and caricatures. Additionally, her photographic submissions at the annual Hammondsport Art Show garnered her several awards. She and Bud were members of Penn Yan Art Guild. She also was a long-time lector at St. Gabriel’s church in Hammondsport and enjoyed singing in the Finger Lakes Chorus. In retirement, Martha served as a volunteer for numerous organizations, including the Glenn Curtiss Museum, Hammondsport Library and as a nursing ombudsman. She also expanded her artistic interests, learning pottery while continuing to hone her photography skills. Favorite subjects to photograph were her grandchildren,