Martha Hull Roupas

Martha Hull Roupas, 95, of Piney Flats, Tennessee, died on Sunday, July 21, 2024, in Johnson City, Tennessee.

Martha was born into the loving home of A. Harold Hull and Martha Frances Porter Hull in 1929.

Martha attended Johnson City Schools. After her high school graduation, she attended and graduated from Ward Belmont College in Nashville, Tennessee. Martha then received her Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee, while also participated in other course work at various other sites.

After college, Martha began teaching in the Washington County and Johnson City School Systems. She then went on to work for and retired from the State of Tennessee in 1990 after 30+ years of licensing Upper East Tennessee daycare centers during the 1960’s when many were first being developed due to women entering the workforce. She did program monitoring out of Knoxville, Tennessee for all of East Tennessee, social service programs as they developed under the Office of Economic Opportunity Program, and later she became the Contract Supervisor in Nashville, Tennessee for all of the East Tennessee area. Her last five years working for the State of Tennessee were spent in the position of Tennessee’s Refugee Coordinator. After her retirement, she worked for fifteen more years as a Conservator Representative for Comcare Inc.

Having lived in Knoxville, Nashville, and in New Braunfels, Texas, Martha returned to the Tri-Cities area in 2013 residing in Piney Flats, Tennessee.

Along with her parents, Martha is preceded in death by: twins, a Baby Boy and a Baby Girl; one son, James A. Roupas; one brother, A. Harold Hull Jr.; and three sisters, Janet Baxley, Carolyn Whitmire and Linda Fletcher.

Those remaining to cherish her memory include: two sons, Philip C. Roupas of Los Angeles, California and Frank Anthony “Tony” Roupas of South Daytona, Florida; two grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; one brother, Robert Hull of Bristol, Tennessee; and many special nieces and nephews.

Memories and condolences may be shared with the family via www.morrisbaker.com.

Morris-Baker Funeral Home and Cremation Services, 2001 E Oakland Avenue Johnson City, Tennessee 37601, is honored to serve the family of Martha Hull Roupas. 423-282-1521.

HERE THE BIRDS’ JOURNEY ENDS

Here the birds’ journey ends, our journey, the journey of words, and after us there will be a horizon for the new birds.

We are the ones who forge the sky’s copper, the sky that will carve roads after us and make amends with our names above the distant cloud slopes.

Soon we will descend the widow’s descent in the memory fields and raise our tent to the final winds: blow, for the poem to live, and blow on the poem’s road.

After us, the plants will grow and grow over roads only we have walked and our obstinate steps inaugurated.

And we will etch on the final rocks, “Long live life, long live life,” and fall into ourselves. 

And after us there’ll be a horizon for the new birds.

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) 

(translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah)