Barbara Martin
From her patio, Barbara Martin can see more than the Riverton Yacht Club and the Delaware River. She can envision memories galore: Childhood days boarding her family’s boats. Numerous sailing races she won as a young adult. Artists and sailors she housed when they visited Riverton. Family reunions she hosted on the 4th of July.
Barbara May Lippincott was born in 1930 at 7 Morgan Avenue, Palmyra, on the younger end of a six-boy, two-girl family. Her father, Howard Lippincott, was an architect who sailed in his free time (and occasionally for a paycheck). The family’s yacht Pythagoras moored at RYC when they weren’t traveling between the Delaware and the Chesapeake Bay.
That sailing spirit was part of Lippincott blood. Barbara sailed competitively, often against her siblings. Barbara stood out as a woman who collected wins throughout the region, one year placing 6th in a national race! In Riverton, she tallied the most points in the Duster Class of the notable Governor's Cup Regatta.
It was at a regatta that Barbara spied a handsome young man named John Martin. He was an architect like her father, and a sailor as well. They married in 1952 at Christ Church in Riverton and moved to 414 Lippincott Avenue. With their five children, the Martins spent plenty of time aboard their Walter Mitty cruising around the Chesapeake Bay. They moved to Bank Avenue more than 50 years ago.
Like their mother, all five Martin children graduated from Palmyra High School. They have carried on family traditions in other ways. All of them sailed, and Barb now owns a boat that carries on the Walter Mitty name. John is an architect who works from his father’s former office in Barbara’s home. Rich inherited his father’s woodworking skills, and the table and chairs he made in high school still fill Barbara’s kitchen. Bob contributed to the town with service as Mayor; John Sr. was on the Council. Like her mother did in 1978, Jane opened her doors for the Christmas Candlelight House Tour that has raised money for the local library.
Gradually the Martin parents shifted from being sailors to chauffeuring sailors, as their children signed on for one weekend regatta after another. They also played in tennis leagues – Barbara into her 80s. They gardened and sang in the Christ Church choir, hobbies that Barbara continued after John Sr. died in 1984. She volunteered time with the Women of Christ Church and the Cinnaminson Home Board, and she pitched in at Zurbrugg Memorial Hospital. She did a stint as secretary for RYC; the club recognized that and other support by honoring her with a lifetime membership.
Not solely a volunteer, Barbara worked as a bookkeeper for the W.G. Seither Studebaker dealership in Palmyra, then the Lippincott Boat Works that two of her brothers owned. She also handled those tasks for her husband’s business for decades. Until age 87, she did that for son John’s architectural firm.
Barbara is “Mom” to 5 children, “Grandmom” to 16, and “Great Grandmom” to 4 with another on the way. Nineteen of them live in Riverton/Palmyra. They were among the crowd of some 100 family members who gathered on the Martin patio for 50 years of July 4th reunions.
“Beyond her direct descendants, she is also loved and respected by their families,” son John said. “Everyone in our broad, extended family considers her to be ‘THE’ matriarch.”
Fun Facts about the 2022 Parade Marshal
Barbara’s brother built a Duster for her, the small sailboat with Riverton roots. She named it “Tanny Boo” because that’s what she called him as a tot who couldn’t quite pronounce his name “Stanley Ballou.”
In the 1947 Tillicum yearbook of Palmyra High School, Barbara declared a goal of serving as RYC commodore, as her father had done. She never got that role, but in 2006 her daughter Barb became the first female to do so.
When sailors came to Riverton for multi-day regattas or artists visited for weeklong classes, Barbara gave them room and board in the Bank Avenue home that was emptier after the passing of her husband’s and the departure of the older children.
The original deed of her house extends beyond what is now a street and into the water. About 10 years ago, Barbara took legal action to give permanent permission for RYC to use the tidal area for its purposes, which was a critical step in the expansion and stabilization of the pier. Each year, she readily gives permission for the public to gather along the water’s edge to watch the RYC Raft Race on the 4th of July.
Written by Renee Janowicz