ES - re: ANST - Lord Martin Hart of Wells passes on

[DonValentyn at AOL.com]

Good morning,

Since I haven't posted anything on Elfsea-net in months, I'm going to happily 
hog a little bandwidth to share my own recollection of Martin Hart of Wells.  
The short story is, Martin had the heart of a Lion, Knight, Don, Pelican, or 
whatever other station you can think of.  He also passed on a great tradition 
to some of us that I think the rest of Elfsea will appreciate:

When I was an SCA newbie (1990-91) in the Shadowlands, Martin live a few 
hours away, in Bryn Gwald.  A few of us Shadowlanders drove on occasion to 
Bryn Gwald for fighter practice, and Martin made it a point to spend his 
evening teach us to fight.  Many of us were college students, had little 
money, no transportation, and not a lot of resources.  On more than one 
occasion Martin drove hours out of his way to pick some of us up for events.

He also made weekend trips up just to take us starving college students out 
to dinner.  I don't know how many weekends Martin spent with us, playing 
games, practicing fighting, and treating us to something other than Ramen and 
tuna.  Whenever someone tried to back out because we couldn't pay for 
ourselves Martin would say: "Don't worry about it.  I was in your boots once, 
but now I've got a decent job and I can afford to take you guys out to eat.  
I'm happy to spend my money this way, as long as you guys do the same thing 
for someone else when you're able."

A lot of the things he did for us were "little acts", but when you add them 
all up, Martin was a major force keeping some of us newcomers in the SCA.  
Even more important, he was the living example of a true friend.  We sure 
were lucky to have him pass through our lives.

Valentyn
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