Visitation: Thursday, July 31, 2014 from 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm at the Long Beach Colonial Mortuary; 638 Atlantic Avenue; Long beach, CA.

Service: Friday, August 1, 2014 at 11:00 am at New Hope Baptist Church; 1160 New York Street; Long Beach, CA.

Interment: Forest Lawn Memorial Park; 4471 Lincoln Avenue; Cypress, CA.

Obituary

Leon Henderson Martin, age 101, passed away Thursday, July 23rd, 2014 at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center from complications of a vehicle accident that occurred just three weeks before his passing.

Born in Anniston, Alabama on July 6, 1913 to Henderson Martin and Ella Snow-Martin.  Leon is survived by his five children, John Martin, Sr., Roberta Outlaw, Paula-Marie Martin, Paul-Dean Martin and Virginia Martin, eleven grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

Leon married Lorraine Barbara Puszert who then became Lorraine Barbara Martin.  The two were married in 1956 and remained married for 18 years.  With the blessing of God they had five beautiful children.

Leon was an active member of The New Hope Baptist Church where he sang in the choir and served his community.  Leon has shared the last six years of his life together with Ms. Dorothy Thomas.  Together, he and Ms. Dorothy, have volunteered at the church and assisted with passing out food and clothing to families in need within his community and strangers alike. He lived his life the same way with passion and love. He would help everyone. He always had a smile and a kind word for everyone.

Throughout his life, Leon has always tried to help as many people as he could.  He would do whatever was necessary to help those in need.  Oftentimes, people he helped took advantage of his kindness, but he would never let that deter him from helping the next person who came to him asking for assistance.  But, do not let the previous statement mislead you, Leon has helped so many other people in their time of need and through those times of need, strong friendships were born.

And just like a fine wine, as Leon grew older, he just got better with time.  He was extremely proud of his age and how he was able to maintain his independence.  He enjoyed fishing and bragged that "after a certain age"; he no longer needed a fishing license to go fishing and would just get on the boat.  He continued to do handyman work for drop dead prices (Almost Free), he continued to do handyman work until the most recent side job which was within the last month of his life.

Leon died doing what he enjoyed… helping people. It was the early morning of June 27th, 2014 when he was asked to help a friend and drive his friend to the airport.  On that morning he was involved in a traffic collision and as a result of that traffic collision he was unable to recover from his injuries.  Leon is now looking down upon us, most likely, helping people around Heaven or he is building something somewhere that God needs built.  He was a man of God.