PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 24, No. 11, Dec. 2, 2004

Moore time for service work during retirement

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu

Click photo to enlarge Photo by Kwame Ross Helping hands Retiree Martha Moore and her husband, Thom, are building a new home in Champaign. Since retiring last December from the Office of Admissions and Records, Moore has been involved with volunteer work through her church and other Mennonite organizations.

Retiree Martha Moore and herhusband, Thom, are planning a trip to Jamaica soon. But the Moores aren’t planning a pleasure trip: They are going to assist in the relief efforts for Jamaica’s hurricane victims as part of a mission program sponsored by a Mennonite group.

Since retiring as director of undergraduate admissions in the Office of Admissions and Records last December, Martha Moore has become more involved in service work through her church, and has volunteered at a Mennonite grade school on the south side of Chicago and at Ten Thousand Villages, a nonprofit gift store in Champaign that sells handcrafted items made by artisans worldwide who would otherwise be unemployed or underemployed.

Service has been an integral part of Moore’s life and faith. Her parents were Mennonite missionaries and were working in
Argentina when Martha was born. The Mennonite faith places an emphasis on service work and young people typically spend a year or so performing mission work in early adulthood. The demands of being a dual-career couple with a young son that took precedence during that period of Moore’s life have now eased since her son is grown and Moore has retired.

Moore also relishes having more leisure time to spend with family and friends and she has realized the importance of those bonds.
In August, Moore had a reunion with 12 grade-school friends in La Jolla, Calif. She also has been writing a lot of cards and letters, and she and Thom have visited friends and relatives around the country, including a son and his family, who live in Orlando, Fla.

The Moores visited Santa Fe and Taos, N.M., last January through Elderhostel; they also are planning to live in Paris for a couple of months at some point. Their travel goal is to visit all seven continents; they have yet to see Antarctica and Australia.

The Moores also are building a home in Champaign, which they expect to have completed this month. To assist her in all the planning and decisions required by such a project, Moore said she has become “addicted to HGTV” (Home and Garden Television).

Moore and her husband also take yoga classes at the Fitness Center in Champaign several times a week, an activity they took up several years ago when they were both suffering from back problems and facing the possibility of medication or surgery. They both found significant relief of their symptoms through yoga, and Moore proudly said they are both medication-free at a time in their lives when many people tend to become reliant on prescription drugs.

Moore joined the UI in 1979 as assistant to the director of admissions and spent all 24 years of her UI career at OAR, having twice served as the interim director of admissions, once in the mid-1990s and again during academic year 02-03.

“It always made me proud to say where I worked,” Martha said. “Working with a Big Ten university is a wonderful experience.”
Moore’s primary responsibility was recruiting students for the campus, and one of the high points for her was the composition of the freshman class that entered the UI in the fall semester 2003. “We had a record number of minority, out-of-state and
international students enrolled. I’m not sure all those things would come together again. It just felt like the icing on the cake,” Moore said.

Another pinnacle was being involved in the construction of the new OAR building. “It was marvelous to see that building and be part of the planning,” Moore said. “That was a wonderful thing.”

Moore is still active in the National Association of College Admissions Counselors. She earned her undergraduate degrees in psychology at Geneva College, Beaver Falls, Pa., and her doctorate in counselor education at West Virginia University.

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