Los Angeles
County
Biographies
MARTHA
ELLEN COUZENS
For
the greater part of his life Martha Ellen Couzens has been closely associated
with the Baptist Church. A graduate of
the Chicago Baptist Missionary Training School in 1928, Mrs. Couzens served for
a year as secretary at the Baptist headquarters for northern California in San
Francisco, and from 1929 to 1933 was secretary to Dr. John Snape
at the Temple Baptist Church in Los Angeles.
She is now a member of the First Baptist Church of Alhambra and is a
past president of the Women’s Missionary Society, a counselor of a girls’ high
school guild, and a member of the organ committee for the new Skinner organ
which is to be installed in the summer of 1962.
Mrs. Couzens is president of the Alhambra-San Gabriel Council of United
Church Women and in 1960 served as vice-president of that organization. She is also program chairman of the Foothill
Association of Baptist Women of Southern California.
A
direct descendant of President Adams, Martha Ellen Couzens was born in Oakland,
California, on May 9, 1908, the daughter of Albert Everett and Harriett May
(Wilson) Hall. Mr. Hall, born in Iowa,
was a manufacturer of Hall floor furnaces.
After moving from Oakland he was a dealer in plumbing supplies. Mrs. Couzen’s brother, Dr. Bertin E. Hall, a retired dentist, lives in Glendale. Mrs. Couzens received her education in
Oakland, graduating from Technical High School and Heald’s Business College
there.
The
former Miss Martha Ellen Hall was married to J. Haydn Couzens on September 16,
1939, in the West Adams Baptist Church in Los Angeles. Mr. Couzens is in sales service for
Fiberboard Paper Products in Vernon, and is scoutmaster for Boy Scout Troop
Number 213 in Alhambra. He is also tenor
soloist for the First Methodist Church in Alhambra.
From
1944 until 1946, while her husband served in the United States Navy, Mrs.
Couzens was employed in the
escrow department at Union Title and Trust Company in San Diego.
Taking
up residence in Alhambra in 1950, Mrs. Couzens began working for a certified
public accountant and became interested in bookkeeping. She is now a part time bookkeeper for several
small business organizations.
Mr.
and Mrs. Couzens adopted two boys:
Michael John Couzens, who was born in 1946 and adopted at the age of three
months; he attends Alhambra High School and is active in debate and journalism;
and David Morlais Couzens,
born in 1951, who died of leukemia in 1955.
They are also the parents of an adopted daughter, Deborah May, who was
born in 1955 and who attends Park School in Alhambra.
Very
civic minded, Mrs. Couzens ran for city commissioner against Talmage Burke in
1958, and has been active on citizens’ committees for school bonds. She holds an honorary life membership in the
Parent-Teachers’ Association given by Park School, and is a member of the
Alhambra High School Parent-Teachers’ Association, and of the Alhambra council
of that association, in which she has been active for ten years. Mrs. Couzens is also a member of the Alhambra
Mental Health Board. She is state
parliamentarian of Lambda Sigma Pi, a national educational and philanthropic
sorority. She has formerly served as
state educational chairman and state membership chairman of that sorority.
A
jovial person, Mrs. Couzens believes that to be a friend and give service to
others is the way to be happy.
Transcribed by
V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source:
Historical Volume & Reference Works Including Alhambra, Monterey Park,
Rosemead, San Gabriel & Temple City, by Robert P. Studer,
Pages 588-589, Historical Publ., Los Angeles, California. 1962.
© 2013 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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