Angling for Life

Jennie Logsdon Martin isn’t supposed to be here.

Doctors told Logsdon Martin, who suffers from a degenerative tissue disease called Marfan syndrome, that she would be dead before she turned 35. But what is most remarkable about her—she’s now 42—isn’t that she’s beaten the odds, it’s the way she’s done it, with humor and passion.

Logsdon Martin is a mother and artist, a classical pianist, a website designer, and one of the most impassioned anglers on the Oregon coast.

“I love how beautiful it is,” says Logsdon Martin of Tillamook (pop. 4,352), as she looks at the Kilchis River bubbling just 50 feet from the house she shares with her two sons and fiancé Bill Hedlund. “I love it. When I catch a fish, and I have him there on the line, and my heart starts pumping, and the adrenaline starts flowing, it’s a rush.”

“It’s a real spiritual thing,” she adds.

The same holds true for her music. Logsdon Martin learned to play piano as a child growing up in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. For decades, she played professionally, even performing for President Ronald Reagan. But failing eyesight, a result of Marfan syndrome, makes it difficult to read the sheet music, so she plays mostly for herself and family now. And for the congregation.

“You should see what she does to the congregation,” says Doug Rich, pastor of the Pioneer Presbyterian Church on Clatsop Plains where Logsdon Martin plays. “She plays and looks around, and people smile back. They really respond to her.”

Logsdon Martin’s positive attitude is one of the things that attracted Hedlund, when the two met four years ago. That, and the fact that she could fish. But Hedlund also admires her drive.

“When she wants to know something, she is absolutely focused, extremely determined, and occasionally stubborn,” he says.

That focus created a business after Logsdon Martin was trained by a local Internet provider to design websites. She now develops sites for other area businesses, while maintaining www.ifish.net, a site loaded with fishing news, river conditions, and product information. She writes about the fishing life and about coping with Marfan syndrome.

Like most of the 200,000 people diagnosed with the disease in the United States, including her oldest son Andrew, Logsdon Martin is tall, nearly 6-feet, and thin, with joints that can twist and bend like a contortionist.

“Actually, I’ve found some benefits. I can scratch my back better than you can,” she says, smiling and reaching her elbow behind her head. “I’m extremely flexible.”

The disease affects the connective tissues, ultimately destroying many of the body’s organs including the lungs, heart, and circulatory system. Logsdon Martin, diagnosed with the disease as a child, knows it could kill her. But it won’t destroy her spirit.

“What I get from Jennie is that her spirit wants to be alive and a part of all that is around her, even when her body feels heavy,” Rich says.

“I’d rather deal with things with humor instead of being glum all the time,” Logsdon Martin says. “There just is never enough time to do all I want to do.”

But she’s making the most of the time she has.

Polly Campbell is a frequent contributor to American Profile.

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