A local nonprofit organization that helps police families throughout the area who have suffered from illness, disability or the loss of a loved one is creating a scholarship that will go to a deserving New Canaan High School student while honoring a local police officer who died while on the job 25 years ago.
L-R: Stephanie, Lauren, James and Christopher Martin. Published with permission from Lauren Martin
This year, proceeds from the New Canaan Police Benevolent Association’s annual Jim Martin Memorial Cops & Robbers Golf Tournament will fund a new, need-based scholarship at NCHS, according to the organization’s president, Officer Roberto Lopez, and vice president, Officer Ron Bentley.
A local tradition since the 1970s that has been held in Martin’s honor since he died in 1991, the golf tournament in past years has raised money that went to the fallen officer’s widow and children.
Those kids are grown now, the officers said, and approached with an idea of honoring her husband by helping a local student work toward their goals, Lauren Martin “was all for it,” Lopez said.
“We came up with this to keep the tradition going and to keep something in his name,” he said.
Stephanie and Christopher Martin, deceased New Canaan Police Officer James “Marty” Martin’s children. Published with permission from Lauren Martin
Reached by New Canaanite, Lauren Martin said she was “very pleased” with the plan.
“I think it’s a great thing for somebody to be rewarded a scholarship,” she said.
Her husband died July 24, 1991, from injuries he sustained after coming into contact with a downed power line after a severe thunderstorm. Officer Martin was 36 and survived by his wife and their two children, Stephanie and Christopher (known as ‘CJ’).
Lauren Martin said her husband, ‘Marty’ as he was called, had been a Shelton police officer for some years prior to joining New Canaan.
Marty was from Shelton originally, though his family moved around quite a lot, including a stint in Alaska, since his own father was in the U.S. Army, Lauren Martin said. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Southern Connecticut State University (attending the school with future NCPD Chief Ed Nadriczny, with whom he worked in New Canaan), and after the Martins were married—a development that Marty relished, Lauren Martin recalled, since he had been an only child and felt as though he came into an entirely new family with her—they adopted a dog. A mutt named ‘Beecher’ because the animal had been picked up on Beecher Road in Woodbridge, the dog was “babied” by Marty, who didn’t have pets growing up, she said.
New Canaan Police Officer James Martin. Credit: Officer Down Memorial Page (http://www.odmp.org/)
Lauren Martin said her husband had a “very dry sense of humor.”
“He always made people laugh. He read a lot and he always had Newsweek, Time, all those magazines.”
She added: “He was very conscious if you treated him with respect, and he respected everybody. He was that type. Very personable. He could talk to anybody about anything.”
Stephanie, who turns 31 on Wednesday, now manages a Dunkin Donuts in Monroe, and CJ, 28, is a U.S. Navy petty officer third class with the Construction Battalion or “Seabees” in Gulfport, Miss., their mom said.
L-R: New Canaan Police Benevolent Association Vice President Officer Ron Bentley and President Officer Robert Lopez. Credit: Michael Dinan
That Marty’s memory now will be preserved through a scholarship “is very comforting to me,” she said.
“This way, he will not be forgotten.”
Lauren Martin said she usually goes the dinner on the night of the golf tournament, and plans to attend next month (details below).
“It’s nice to see the guys there and some of his college friends still go to it, so I get to see everybody once a year,” she said.
When the Martins started having kids, Lauren recalled, she left her job at Sikorsky, “because we both agreed that we did not want them being raised by anybody else.”
“I was fortunate enough to be able to do that for a long time,” she said.
After her husband died, Lauren said she went back to school and earned a medical assistant’s certificate, though now she’s staying at home to help raise her grandson. Stephanie’s boy, named Elijah James after a grandfather he never met, is four years old, she said.
Lauren Martin said she also has been occupied, as she cared for her own mother before she passed away last year, and soon after, her father fell and broke a hip, and he passed away two months ago.
After 10:30 a.m. registration, the golf tournament itself starts at 12 p.m.—rain or shine, at Whitney Farms Golf Course in Shelton—and runs under a scramble format. (See details and registration information, as well as information on how to help sponsor the tournament, in the PDFs embedded below.)
Though their time on the force came after Martin, his memory is very much alive within the department, the officers said.
“He was a standup guy,” Lopez said.
His wife said he was “a really good guy.”
“I haven’t found anybody comparable to him in 25 years,” Lauren Martin said with a laugh. “I’ve given up.”
She added: “There was a lot of things he missed in this lifetime.”
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