Tramel: Happy Mother's Day to Martha, the year-round P.E. teacher

Martha lived in one school district but taught in another. So on days when her son’s school was out and her school was in session, Martha would take the boy with her to work.

Seven straight classes with his mom. He thought it was great. She taught physical education. Yep, straight seven hours of P.E.

Dodgeball or basketball or whatever the sport of the day happened to be. One time, he brought his hockey gear and played goalie all day long as kids of all ages learned to swing a hockey stick. “Dream come true,” he says decades later.

But Martha’s boy loved summers even more. Until he got to middle school, he figures he played more games with Martha than any of his friends.

Horse in the driveway. Whiffle ball in the backyard. Swimming. Hitting golf balls into buckets. Every summer day was its own P.E. class.

“She was so great in so many ways,” said Martha’s son. “Just such a great home to grow up in. Just the time she also took to spend with me.

“Looking back, she spent the majority of the year teaching kids in P.E. It would be really easy to take time off in the summer, but it seemed in the summertime, she’d take right back up with me. We would have P.E. class at home.”

Soon enough, Martha morphed from sidekick to transportation director, driving her boy all over, for practice and games and camps and long-distance competition.

Martha’s husband was no small part in the boy’s life. A notable athlete himself, he coached many of their son’s teams.

But there was something about Martha that invigorated the boy’s athletic passions. And she definitely played the role of teacher.

“She was probably the tougher parent between me and her,” said Martha’s husband. “She kind of had the rules he had to follow; when you’re in a class of 25 kids all day long, when you’re in seven or eight classes, there has to be an order to accomplish anything. She had that. She’d have her rules and you’d have to mind ‘em.”

On the rare occasions when Martha’s son warranted discipline, he’d be banished to his room, and Martha’s husband would be the one watching the clock.

"Hey, has he been back there long enough,” the father would ask. “Me and him got something to do.”

Martha was born in Miami, Florida. Her father played a little semi-pro baseball but was more of a fan. She remembers him watching three games at a time.

She played tennis in high school – a full slate of girls sports had not yet fully come to schools – and then went to OSU. During a Bedlam weekend in the 1970s, she reunited with a friend from high school. They eventually married, and soon enough Martha was a year-round P.E. teacher.

The boy was the whole world to Martha and her husband.

Martha’s son said his parents’ answer was always yes.

“If I wanted to go to the batting cages, the answer was always yes,” he said. “If I wanted to go to the gym and shoot baskets, the answer was always yes. If I asked to play catch, the answer was always yes.”

Martha and her husband tried not to steer him in any direction, but to expose him to a lot of things, in hopes he would find something he liked. Turns out he did.

They taught their son that if you were going to do something, you needed to give it your best effort, especially if your name was going to be associated with something.

That mentality carried over to school. Years later, a veteran college academician would say that he had encountered only five true scholar-athletes in his career. Martha’s son was on the list.

These days, Martha is retired, but that son has three kids of his own, and Martha is up to her old tricks.

The grandkids come back from Martha’s house exhausted. They’ve been to the trampoline park or jumped in the pool or been down to the pond, looking for frogs or got a tutorial on t-ball hitting. At Easter, Martha initiated a water-balloon fight by the pool, complete in her Easter dress.

Martha has taken up a few things for herself, like golf and pickleball.

“She’s the best,” said Martha’s son. “She never stops. She always wants to be doing something. It’s usually involved something outside. She still enjoys the games. She still loves any sort of game or competition.”

After all those whiffle-ball tosses and golf balls in the bucket and horse games on the driveway, still a P.E. teacher at heart.

And so on this fine Sunday morning, a tip of the cap to the wife of Kent and the mother of Sam. Happy Mother’s Day, to Martha Bradford.

Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Berry Tramel: Happy Mother's Day to Martha, a year-round P.E. teacher