Marist High head to lead school in Honolulu
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Author: Cathoic Sentinel
Released 29 April 2008
EUGENE — Perry Martin, principal of Marist High School here since 2004, will take over as president of Maryknoll School in Honolulu in July.
Perry Martin will take over as president of Maryknoll School in Honolulu in July.
Photo from Catholic Sentinel
Martin is credited with bringing Marist into the technological age with laptops, projectors and multimedia applications in every classroom. Marist saw increases in both enrollment and faculty salaries during his tenure.
Martin will replace the Mary-knoll school’s popular president, who plans to move back to New England and enter semi-retirement.
The new president intends to use his ears more than his mouth.
“If you don’t come in and be a listener, all you are is a speaker, and you don’t learn the history that way,” Martin told the Honoulu Advertiser. “You can’t move forward unless you listen.”
Martin was born in San Jose, Calif., and grew up in Oregon, graduating from Corvallis High School in 1975. He played linebacker for Division II Western Oregon State University, where he received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education. He also holds an elementary and secondary administrative certificate from The College of New Jersey.
He plans to take up residence in Hawaii with his wife, Leann, a third-grade teacher.
They have a 21-year-old daughter, Cassandra, who is graduating from the Art Institute in Portland with a degree in interior design; and an 18-year-old son, Jameson, who is graduating from Marist and will also play linebacker at Western Oregon State University, where he will study fire administration. Martin says his son has more speed and athleticism than he did.
Martin has served for more than 30 years in education, including a dozen years teaching in Saudi Arabia. He was an educator and administrator for the U.S. Consulate in Saudi Arabia, serving at a school for expatriates housed within the compound of an Aramco oil refinery just 50 miles from Kuwait City. For a month during the end of the 1991 Gulf War, the refinery withstood nightly missile attacks from Iraqi forces.
“Pieces of Scuds kept landing on my roof,” Martin told the Sentinel in 2005. When Saddam Hussein’s retreating troops burned Kuwaiti oil wells, thick smoke blew into the Aramco compound.
“The street lights were on all the time for a month,” Martin recalls.
It was then, in the murk, that he joined the church.
He was following the example of his staunchly Catholic wife. A priest secreted into the compound against Saudi law helped Martin receive the sacraments.
Martin served as principal of Sacred Heart School in Medford for eight years before taking the post at Marist.
This article was originally published in the April 4, 2008 print edition of the Catholic Sentinel.