Carl Scheeler and other musician friends of Ron Martin laugh after playing together at Martin's funeral on Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2021, at the Pendleton Convention Center.

PENDLETON — More than 100 people gathered Wednesday, Oct. 13, in the Pendleton Convention Center in commemoration of Ron Martin, longtime owner of the Pendleton Pioneer Chapel, Folsom-Bishop funeral home, who died Oct. 4. He was 69.

Mourners remembered Martin as someone who always went above and beyond to help friends, family and people who he didn’t even know.

Martin was a member of Rotary, the Elks and Eagles lodges, an active volunteer at programs and events and supporter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He won many awards for his service in Pendleton, including a Pendleton First Citizens award in 2018.

“He was always there,” said Pastor Chris Clemons, of the Pendleton Church of the Nazarene. “He was always involved. And he was involved because he wanted to be.”

Martin’s casket sat at the front of the center’s main corridor. The high-ceilinged room was decorated with orange, red, yellow and white flowers. His guitar sat propped in front of the casket. A painting of horses looking toward green fields among mountains in the sunlight hung above the place where Martin’s closest friends and family shared their memories.

Wally Ordeman, executive director of the Oregon Funeral Directors Association, said Martin was somebody who understood the death care industry better than almost anyone else; Martin expertly guided clients through pain and grief. Several people who attended the service said Martin was someone who showed up to comfort grieving community members in the late hours of the evening.

Ordeman remembers he and Martin having occasional disagreements but still getting along perfectly well. That reality was common in their years working together, he said, adding he “loved Ron Martin like a brother.”

Other speakers told stories about Martin’s commitment to helping those in need. He accommodated families who couldn’t pay for end-of-life services, “just because it was the right thing to do,” Clemons said. He also helped people experiencing homelessness, Clemons said, buying meals, renting hotel rooms, or using the chapel as a drop-off point for food and clothing for those less fortunate.

“It was more than a business to him,” Clemons said. “These were people. This was his community. These were his neighbors.”

The service concluded with music.

Martin, a musician himself, could sometimes be found playing around the markets on the streets of downtown Pendleton on summer evenings. At the end of the service, a small band of Martin’s musician friends jammed for a while playing “You Are My Sunshine,” and “I’ll fly away.” The mourners listened quietly.

Afterwards, those in attendance moved to the back of the room. They shared snacks and their memories of Martin.

Among them was Clifford Smith, a post commander with the Pendleton VFW, who served in the United States Army in Vietnam from 1971 to 1972. He and several VFW members wore matching jackets at the ceremony, and they spoke about Martin’s commitment to helping local veterans.

Smith recalled Martin reaching out to local veterans and telling them his services always were available to them. He held ceremonies for veterans annually, and maintained a memorial garden for local fallen members of the military that sits in front of the chapel. Seeing the garden makes Smith feel pride in having served his country.

“He went far beyond his duties,” Smith said of Martin.

Smith said he’s worried about what the chapel’s annual Veteran’s Day memorial service will look like now that Martin is gone.

Umatilla County Commissioner George Murdock met Martin soon after he came to Pendleton more than a decade ago. They bonded while involved in the Pendleton Rotary together and through event planning, he said. Murdock, a graduate of Washington State University, said he even contacted Martin about setting up a prepaid funeral and making an urn out of a steel WSU football helmet. That’s still the plan, even though Martin has passed, Murdock noted.

“He cast quite a shadow,” Murdock said. “He touched a lot of people. I looked around (today) and thought, what a tribute.”

Margaret Harned sat with two friends at the back of the room, chatting about Martin. He had helped her when her husband died a year ago. The three spoke about how, in this life, one meets only a handful of truly extraordinary people. Those who you meet and, within moments, you feel that you’ve known them your whole life, and you know they’d do anything for you.

To them, that was Ron Martin.