MARTHA J. IRISH, ASH
Remembering Miss Minnie Warrender
by Peter E. Blau
Martha Irish recalled in a memoir she wrote shortly before she died on Aug. 22, 2015, that her first job was an entry-level position with the National 4-H Club Foundation in a suburb of Washington, D.C. She learned bookkeeping, worked for a CPA firm, and then decided to run her own company, offering accounting and tax service.
She loved the theater, and was a volunteer usher at various theaters in Washington. She was house manager for a theater festival, and it was through the theater that she found the Red Circle of Washington in the 1970s, thanks to her friend Philip Brogdon, a local actor and Sherlockian. Thus it was natural for her to manage the Red Circle’s theater party for a production of “Cats” at the National Theatre (we gathered for drinks afterward and were delighted when we were joined by Macavity, without makeup or costume).
Martha also had great imagination, perhaps best displayed when she won a prize at the costume party held by the Red Circle, when three people appeared as Sherlock Holmes: one as a young Holmes, one as an older Holmes, and one as Holmes disguised as an elderly woman, with the baggy parasol that Count Negretto Sylvius politely handed to her (MAZA). That was Martha, of course.
It’s quite likely that the prize she won encouraged her to select “Miss Winnie Warrender” (also found in MAZA) as her ASH investiture.
Martha had many other enthusiasms, including her pets (a cat and a dog), beading, wire work, metalsmithing, quilting, and ice skating (“I wasn’t any good at that,” she wrote, “despite having studied with a world and Olympic coach. I did, however, have a great time trying.”)
She was generous and supportive, sweet and kind and kindly, and a good friend to many people in the Sherlockian and non-Sherlockian worlds.
