2008
Virginia Martin, 79, a former executive director of Parents Without Partners, an international support group for single parents and
their children, died April 17 at Suburban Hospital after a heart attack. She was a Bethesda resident.
Mrs. Martin was separated from her husband when she began working for Parents Without Partners as a secretary in the early
1970s.
She spent about a decade with the organization and helped lead the Coalition for the White House Conference on Families.
Later, she was director of the Family Mediation Association and the D.C. Optometric Society.
Virginia Dudley Martin was born in Baltimore and raised in Washington, where she was a 1946 graduate of Woodrow Wilson
High School. She received a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona.
She was a partner in a Bethesda antique store, the Chestnut Tree, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She enjoyed gardening
and antiquing.
Her husband, Charles J. 'C.J'. Martin III, whom she married in 1952, died in 1975. A son, Scott Martin, died in 2005
Survivors include a son, Richard D. Martin of Waukesha, Wis.; and four grandchildren.
-- Adam Bernstein