Mary Elizabeth Martin Arceneaux

Area jobless rate state’s lowest
March 26, 2009
March 30
March 30, 2009
Area jobless rate state’s lowest
March 26, 2009
March 30
March 30, 2009

Posted Friday, March 27, 2009

Mary Elizabeth Martin Arceneaux, an Oklahoma native and beloved Houma, La., resident for more than 40 years, died peacefully Friday, March 27, at Terrebonne General Hospital in Houma following a stroke. She was 82.


Mary was born May 8, 1926 in Vinita, Ok., to A.O. Martin and Mary Elizabeth Barnett Martin, where her father was superintendent of schools. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Martin became the first head of the Former Students’ Association at Oklahoma A&M College (now the Alumni Association of Oklahoma State University), in Stillwater. There, as part of the Oklahoma A&M community, Mary grew up in the company of her two brothers, Charles and James, and a wide but close group of grandparents and aunts and uncles in Stillwater and across Oklahoma. After high school graduation, Mary earned her bachelors degree from Oklahoma A&M, then received her Masters of Education degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.


She met and married Houma native son George Arceneaux Jr. in 1954, while living and working in Washington, D.C. She moved to Washington in preparation for a position in London with Assistant Secretary of State Henry Bennett, in the Point Four overseas development program. When Dr. Bennett died in a tragic air accident, she remained in Washington as a permanent staff member for Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, whom she esteemed all of her life.

In 1960, Mary and George Arceneaux moved to Houma, which remained their home even after his appointment as U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana. South Louisiana was a whole new world for an Oklahoman by way of Washington, D.C., but as with everything she did in her life, she embraced the Louisiana culture and people with joy and enthusiasm. In large measure through her energetic and positive spirit, she and her family were blessed with the friendship and love of a wide circle in Houma and beyond. With George, she became active in Rotary International, and with Rotary they traveled, met, and developed close friendships with people, first throughout the United States, and then throughout the world. They traveled to Brazil, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, and perhaps with the most zeal, to India. Following George’s death in 1993, Mary’s many friends in Houma became even closer to her, and she delighted in her life with them until the time of her death. The last event she missed was a meeting of one of her two bridge clubs with whom she had met and played for decades. In recent years, she also renewed the longest of her friendships, with her high school and college classmates, and her Pi Beta Phi sorority sisters, in Oklahoma.


Through all her life, she was a faithful and devoted Christian, and she transmitted her faith, not only in the formal upbringing of her children, but in her support of the Methodist and Catholic churches, and perhaps most of all in her kind and cheerful dealings with all whom she met.


In Louisiana, she was welcomed to the Arceneaux family, to whom she was as exotic as South Louisiana was to her, but who immediately embraced each other. She forever loved and cherished the pioneer heritage of her Oklahoma home, family, and friends: her beloved brothers, Charles and Jamie; her parents and grandparents, her uncles (her mother’s many brothers, her father’s sister and brothers); her cousins, nephews and nieces and their children. Their activities and news, and her memories and stories of them, were staples of conversation and remembrance. She was and remains the bridge of her Louisiana family to them.

Mary Arceneaux was a devoted and beloved wife and mother, citizen and friend. She lived with zest and a sense of adventure in things both large and small. With her smile and genuine interest in everyone she met, she brought joy and love to countless people, from those she had known since the 1930’s, to those she simply met in her daily errands. She was always confident, hopeful, positive, joyful and supportive—often in those circumstances, and to those people, at those times, when those qualities were in shortest supply, and most needed. She supported civic and community organizations with her active participation and readiness to do anything she could to help. She was a past member of the Krewe of Hyacinthians, and a member of the Terrebonne Literary Club, the Bar-Berry Garden Club, and two bridge clubs whose members are well known but whose schedule is mysterious.

She was preceded in death by her husband, George Arceneaux Jr., her parents, A.O. Martin and Mary Elizabeth Barnett Martin, by her brother, James Martin, and by her niece Patricia Martin.

She is survived by her daughter and son-in-law, Mary Elizabeth and Fernand Dionne of New Orleans, La., and their family, Pvt. Michael Dionne USMC, and Alexandre and Sophie Tremblay and their son Mateo of Ville de Riviere Rouge, Quebec, Canada; by her son and daughter-in-law, George Arceneaux III and Lynn Reynolds Arceneaux of Lafayette, La., with their children George Arceneaux IV, Hugh Andrew Arceneaux, and Emma Katherine Arceneaux; by her son and daughter-in-law, Robert Martin Arceneaux and Jill Broussard Arceneaux of Katy, Tx., with their children, Allison Claire Arceneaux, Kate Elizabeth Arceneaux and Joshua Paul Clements of Gulfport, Ms.; by her brother and sister-in-law, Dr. Charles and Marge Martin of Perry, Ok., and their sons, daughters, and grandchildren; by her sister-in-law Mary Ellen Martin of Cushing, Ok.; by her brother and sister-in-law, Tommie and Kathleen Arceneaux of Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and by her many and most cherished friends everywhere.

Memorial donations may be made to Rotary International, the Good Samaritan Fund (c/o Sr. Miriam Mire, 990 School Street, Houma, La. 70360) or a favorite charity.

Visitation will be 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday, March 29, at Chauvin Funeral Home and 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. Monday, March 30 at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church on Bayou Black, La. Mass of Christian Burial will be at 11 a.m. Monday at the church with interment to follow at Magnolia Cemetery.

Chauvin Funeral Home is in charge of the arrangements.

Mary Elizabeth Martin Arceneaux