Louisa Martin, 64, a longtime resident of Mobile and Fairhope, died Wednesday, Feb. 16 in Montrose of complications from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease).
Born in Birmingham on March 8, 1946, she grew up in Montgomery, graduating from Robert E. Lee High School in 1964. She studied at Samford University and George Washington University and received a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Mobile College.
She worked at Providence Hospital as a medical technologist, then later as a toxicologist with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, where she retired in 2006.
She married Jonathan Morris while at Samford and they lived briefly in Washington, D.C. She moved to Mobile after his death. In 1970 she married Jay Higginbotham of Mobile, with whom she had three children.
She was active in musical theater, starring in Brigadoon, Carnival, and other plays at the Joe Jefferson Playhouse, and sang in the Dauphin Way Methodist Church choir.
She began studying Kung Fu in 1981 and in 1989 founded the Mobile Taiji Center on Dauphin Street. She became a prominent figure in Chinese martial arts, serving as one of the first judges of national Taijiquan competitions in the United States, starting a Wushu team that competed nationally, and holding seminars locally and at events such as A Taste of China in Virginia.
Later in life she became an avid hiker, especially in the mountains and canyons of the Southwest United States. She moved to Prescott, Ariz., in 2006, where she designed and built a home in Manzanita Village and hiked the Grand Canyon as a proud member of the Raven Lunaticks.
She returned to Fairhope after she was diagnosed with ALS in 2007.
She was preceded in death by her parents, Freeman Goode Martin of South Carolina and Flora Drew Findlay Martin of Montgomery.
Survivors include a brother, John Freeman Martin of Wetumpka; three children, Jeanne-Félicie Mercier of Mobile, Denis Martin (Nina Billone Prieur) of Washington, D.C., and Robert Findlay Higginbotham of New York; grandson Carson Maxwell Taylor of Mobile; and her Labrador-Boxer, Sugar and Abyssinian cat, Aggie.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 26 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Daphne. A reception will follow at her residence at 252 S. School St. in Fairhope.
Cremation arrangements are by Hughes Cremation & Funeral Service, Daphne. Online condolences may be made at hughesfuneralservice.com.
