By Frederick N. Rasmussen , fred.rasmussen@baltsun.com|March 10, 2009
The Rev. Joseph C. Martin, a recovering alcoholic and an international leader in the fight against alcoholism and substance abuse who was a co-founder of Father Martin's Ashley, a Harford County treatment center, died early yesterday of heart disease at his Havre de Grace home. He was 84.
Father Martin's "Chalk Talk on Alcohol" and "No Laughing Matter" have become standard tools used by recovery centers, schools and employee assistance programs the world over.
"Father Martin is an icon in the treatment industry and was one of the first to describe alcoholism in layman's terms as a disease," said Mark Hushen, president and chief executive of Father Martin's Ashley, located near Havre de Grace.
"He helped thousands and thousands directly and indirectly with his message all across the world," he said. Mike Gimbel, a substance-abuse expert who was Baltimore County drug czar for 23 years and now directs an anti-steroid program at St. Joseph Medical Center, is an old friend.
"Father Martin has done more to educate and treat those suffering from addiction than anyone in the past 50 years," Mr. Gimbel said yesterday. Born in Baltimore, the son of a machinist who was a heavy drinker, Father Martin was raised in Hampden. He was a 1942 graduate of Loyola High School and attended Loyola College from 1942 until 1944.
He studied for the priesthood at St. Mary's Seminary & University in Roland Park from 1944 to 1948, when he was ordained a priest of the Society of St. Sulpice.
Father Martin began drinking while he held teaching positions at St. Joseph's College in Mountain View, Calif., from 1948 to 1956, and later at St. Charles Seminary in Catonsville from 1956 to 1959.
"I drank from the age of 24 to 34," he told The Sun in a 1992 profile. "I was afraid to go near the altar to say Mass six days a week. I did go on Sunday, but shaking all the while."
After his troublesome behavior came to the attention of superiors, Father Martin was confined to a psychiatric ward in California in 1956, and after his release, returned to drinking double martinis and shots of vodka from hidden bottles in his bathroom.
"It never occurred to me that perhaps there was something odd about a priest walking toward a garbage dump in the middle of the afternoon carrying two suitcases of clanking bottles," he told The Sun in an interview last year.
Finally, the Archdiocese of Baltimore sent Father Martin to Guest House, a Michigan treatment center for the clergy, to get sober.
