My name is Rebekah Morley.  I am proud to take this opportunity to tell you a some things about my brother, Senator Stephen H. Martin and to  let you  know how fortunate I am to have him in my life as well as you are to have him as your  Senator.

Stephen H. Martin was born to Thomas O. and Dorothy M. Martin on June 15, 1956. The late Dorothy Martin gave birth to him at home in the 1^st subdivision built in Chesterfield County, VA.  He is one of eight siblings with one brother and six sisters.

Thomas O. Martin was a ceramic tile contractor, and he and Dorothy were both actively involved in their local church ministry.

Steve attended Richmond Christian Schools at the Byrd Park Campus from K-5 through 3^rd grade. At the age of nine our family moved to a farm in Mecklenburg County, Virginia where he continued his primary education in the public school system.  He enjoyed the debate teams, sports and music programs at school as well as helping our father with music programming on the radio and designing music floats for area parades.

Our father moved the family to Mecklenburg to begin planting churches in Southside Virginia. He continued his ceramic tile business, working crews in Meadowdale, Shenandoah, Salisbury, Bugs Island, Gaston, Emporia and Lawrenceville. Those contracts provided the family income, but, the Martin Family farmed for food while their father served as pastor, without pay.

Steve helped a great deal with the labor of the beautiful church our father built in the South Hill community.  He learned many valuable lessons from our father, including a strong work ethic, service to others above self, and a commitment to principle. Steve also had a love of family. I remember my mother telling me as I grew older how in my preschool years, I would wait on the outside steps for my Steve to come home, hear the bus, and run to greet him.

In grades six and seven, Steve had to operate the dishwasher daily in the LaCrosse Elementary School cafeteria for thirty minutes in order to pay for the lunch he would then eat in the next thirty minutes. In the summers following his seventh and eighth grade years, Steve worked in the peach orchards for $5 a day.  Our family also enjoyed the occasional fresh peaches he was allowed to bring home as part of his pay. From the age of twelve Steve worked alongside our father in the tile business, plowing the fields,  getting up early to feed the many animals, building churches, and ministering to those in need.  Dad would take us all with him at different times to the area nursing homes to visit the elderly, room by room, not only visiting them but also singing to them.  I was always amazed that so many loved this and called out to our family with great excitement.

Steve decided to leave home and work to pay his own tuition so that he could attend an academy for his senior year, primarily to expand his opportunity to minister in music. While in high school, he played the trombone and trumpet (’73 Regional Concert Band), lettered in baseball and soccer, and traveled widely around the country in concert as a vocalist and solo gospel artist. While Steve was at LCA, for his senior year, we lost our father to cancer. He returned home to move our mother and us five younger sisters back to Chesterfield.

Though he had scholarship opportunities in both music and soccer, Steve chose to come home and go to work to help our mother support his younger siblings.  Steve stayed involved in our lives and came often to our school functions and for the sporting events most of us were fortunate to be active in.  He helped our mother get us five girls still at home to many social events and even helped to plan and supervised some of them.

Some years later, as he was starting his own family, Steve purchased his birthplace from our mother and renovated it. It was a much needed sale for our mother and a great opportunity for Steve and his family.

Steve’s community involvement has been too great over the past 30 years to really completely cover, so let me give a brief summary.

When he returned to his birthplace in Bensley, he immediately got involved with the local community association. It was during the time he lived there that the community was able to finesse a way to turn what would have been an unwanted development into a local community park. He has continued that kind of active involvement in each neighborhood in which he has lived. He served on Chesterfield’s Community Services Board and was a founder of Chesterfield Alternatives, Inc., which currently helps to meet the needs of fifty-six Chesterfield adults with mental disabilities. That commitment to those in need remains today.

Steve has been a member of the South Richmond Rotary Club since May of 1994. Steve often boasts of his Rotary Club’s successes in fundraising and charitable contributions in the community. He tells me that it is also well known as being the “fun” club, the “singing” club, and the “fundraising” club. I am confident he has been a valuable member of that club as well throughout the years.

Steve has served in various capacities in ministry through his local church, but his greatest love is to minister in music. Over seventeen years, Steve was minister of music as a layman at two prominent churches in the Richmond area.

Steve is father of my two of my nephews, Chad and Nathan, to name his greatest achievements for me to love. He has been a loving brother and father, just as I know he has been a great legislator. He has a strong love and passion for his work and family; we all enjoy his passion for both. He is firmly rooted in this community he loves and proudly represents.

I urge you to support Steve in his campaign to return to the Virginia Senate to represent us.  I know that with his experience he will continue to provide effective and responsive leadership that will be much needed as we face the challenges of the future.

With much love I am proud to have him as my brother and Senator.

- Rebekah M. Morley