Benjamin Wallace Martin Jr., Ph.D.

1937 - 2021

Benjamin Wallace Martin, Jr., Ph.D.
West Palm Beach - "Come look at this. Come here!" It was inevitable that my brother and I would inherit Dad's love of show and tell. The night before he took his last breath, I searched the internet for an article about molecules with funny names. A site that had been created by a chemist who clearly shared Dad's wicked sense of humor caught my eye. I had planned a stimulating diversion for our Sunday visit and wanted to ask him what he could teach us about the Arsole. There was even a published scientific paper, "Studies on the Chemistry of the Arsoles." I imagined he would smile, a twinkle in his eye, maybe chuckle. Just a couple of days prior, we had listened to Dr. Huberman's extensive podcast on hormones. When I looked over, I was thrilled to see that he was intently listening. At the end of the podcast, we all agreed it had been a fascinating topic and Dad commented, his once-booming baritone barely a whisper, that he was familiar with this researcher from Stanford. Of course, he did. Dad knew just about everything.
Dad was a true polymath, a rare human enthralled by the quest for understanding, compelled to acquire knowledge, and who sought every opportunity to share everything he learned. Destined to become a scientist, from a very young age he was fascinated by the natural world and all that it contained, and throughout his long life held firmly to the belief that science offered humanity untold benefits. And so he set himself on a path of discovery.
His youth in Mobile was filled with love, laughter, and wonder, even when tinged by tragedy. His sense of humor was a steady companion, fortifying him against any hardship. It carried him through the terrifying WWII blackouts that so many endured. The family prayed and sang songs together into the long nights. One of Dad's childhood favorites was "Igrunt in the toilet," igrunt a mispronunciation of ignorant melded with grunt. Instructed by their parents to pray during the blackouts, Bennie and his cousin and best friend Earlie. prayed for everything, including a prayer for the toilet.
As kids, they swam in the Gulf, collected shells on the beach, and tramped through the landscape around their house on Dawes. They played in the Gully and climbed trees and caught anything that, as Earl remembers, "wasn't too fast for us." Dad was a child prodigy who taught himself nearly everything: Linnaean taxonomy, how to make a distillery by age 11, how to speak Arabic before he was 15, how to play the piano before he was 18. As a teenager, he imported palms and orchids to grow in the greenhouse he had built in the yard. His sister Lanny remembers how he learned about wild mushrooms, gathering them from nearby forests to cook and eat without hesitation. An omnivore, he enjoyed cooking the fungi into a favorite dish of frog legs and eggs, and he once made a delicacy of stingray dusted with flour and cooked as an appetizer.
Dad built his first laboratory in a room adjacent to his childhood bedroom where he conducted experiments with compounds and rare soils from diverse locations. He loved reptiles, particularly snakes, which he caught and collected. Carrying his trusty machete, he fearlessly explored the woods to search out even the most venomous of the species. He was particular about speech and grammar, an interest that would lead him to study German at University. He taught himself Spanish and dabbled with French, Russian, Greek, and Latin. After high school, he served in the National Guard and then went off to explore more of this world that provided him with endless delight, traveling to Central America searching for intellectual wonders.
At cruising altitude, somewhere en route to Managua, he met our mom who was working for the airline. With all of his youthful confidence, he walked up to her and asked her name. She reluctantly gave it to him, but little else. Some hours later, Mom was having lunch at the hotel where Dad happened to be staying and he approached again -- would she have dinner with him?
They were inseparable after that chance encounter, miles above the Earth's surface. Married in Managua, they returned to the States, and Dad completed undergraduate studies at the University of South Alabama, then continued his graduate and doctoral studies in Chemistry at the University of Florida. When Mensa invited him to join their ranks, he declined - he didn't much care for clubs or the groupthink he suspected they cultivated. His was a singular mind, destined for singular pursuits. He had found his match in Mom, an equally intelligent and inquisitive woman from a small Miskitu village on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. They started a family and built a life.
After teaching stints at the University of Miami and Florida Atlantic University, Big Ben left academia for private industry. He and Mom fell in love with West Palm Beach where they co-founded Everglades Laboratories, Inc. Our family became tidally locked to the lab, our lives synchronized to that world and the incredible yard they were cultivating with so many rare and captivating plants. When he and mom found antiquing, of course, he needed to visit the country's longest antique fair. And when dinner guests arrived, Dad could barely wait for dessert and the slide show he had prepared of exotic palms and far away places. Was that a Geonoma undata?
Dad was like that, he pulled you into his orbit, took you on a tour, and returned you to where you started. You were left mesmerized, definitely full, sometimes dizzy, maybe sweaty, covered in dirt, bleeding from prickly spines and mosquito bites, and even if you didn't fully comprehend all that he shared, you knew that what you took in during your time together was somehow special.
And he was generous. So many of us are the recipients of plants that he and Mom nurtured in their suburban rainforest, a delicious meal at his most recent favorite restaurant, his presence during important events, his music, his photography, his recipes, and his good stories. A favorite family yarn was how his grandfather had inadvertently imported South American fire ants into Mobile.
New Orleans was a cherished destination and he adored Miami's Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens, insisting we attend every event they hosted. A normal family vacation was to travel to the Amazon rainforest to hike through the muck, pet tapirs, swim with piranha, and collect plants. There were trips to Peru, Ecuador, Panama, and Nicaragua to visit family. Dad traveled across the US, Mexico, Costa Rica and I am sure I am missing other countries and islands. He was a field researcher and explorer at heart and loved setting off into the jungle wearing only shorts, carrying nothing but his camera and a machete.
A professional highlight was his pride at having been tapped to identify an unknown contaminant in a baby formula that had been linked to infant deaths in Haiti. Dad worked tirelessly to determine the mystery adulterant, his results providing answers to grieving parents. His accomplishment didn't appear in the headlines. He did it and moved on, satisfied that he had worked hard, had done good science.
His grandkids fondly remember how he always had something he was excited about and that he had to share: a piece by Schumann, a video of someone else performing on the piano, the organ music he had digitally recreated. There was always a cycad or palm he saw while driving that we had to drive past again, and a pizza place on the way home for slices, even though we had just eaten stone crabs at Joe's in Miami. We always had our own tour guide at botanical gardens because he could tell you the genus and distribution of every specimen. He shared his love for dark chocolate and decadent desserts, and the recipes he invented. A bit of a mad scientist with a love of the arts, he found something to describe as magnificent or wonderful every day.
As his daughter, I am reminded of his quiet strength, during his bout with cancer so many years ago, when he said, "We are all but children playing in a field on the edge of a dark forest. Some of us are taken."
Dad lived life on his terms, doing what he wanted, with people he cared about, the woman he loved by his side. His passions live on in all of us and we are all enriched by having briefly been held in his gravitational pull.
"Ya'll be good. We'll see you later."
On Sunday, July 18, 2021, Benjamin Wallace Martin, Jr., Ph.D. of West Palm Beach, FL, devoted husband and father of two, passed away in his sleep. Ben was born on November 27, 1937, in Mobile, AL to Benjamin and Virginia (Penny) Martin. In 1964 he married the love of his life, Clara. He completed undergraduate studies in chemistry at the University of South Alabama, and in 1973 received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Florida in Gainesville. With his wife, he co-founded Everglades Laboratories, Inc. and served as its laboratory director for over 47 years. Ben was preceded in death by his father, Benjamin, and his mother, Virginia. He is survived by his wife Clara, their two children, Ben and Michelle, their grandchildren Heather and Kyle, his sister Virginia (Lanny), his Cousins Earl and Penny, and numerous relations, friends, and colleagues. Ben's family will hold a private memorial at a later date. Donations to Ben's favorite botanical garden, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, are welcome.