DR. WHO?
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
ALVIN MARTIN, MD
Aaron Burch
A
lvin Martin, MD, is a practicing hematopatholgist with
more than 30 years of experience in Louisville. Other than
brief detours to Boston and Chicago, he’s spent his entire
life in the Bluegrass State. However, he grew up far from his future
in medicine, on a tobacco farm in the town of Verona in northern
Kentucky.
On the Martin's farm, there were chickens and vegetables for the
family, but most of the land went to the cash crop. It was tobacco
that would support them all. Still, he and his family knew from an
early age that the farm life wasn’t for him. Born an only child to
Glenn and Jackie Martin, the young Dr. Martin was encouraged to
read early and often by his mother and grandmother, Hazel Code.
“If I had free time, my grandmother had me reading. They suggested very early on that I think about being a doctor. So I have to
thank her for making sure that door was open for me,” Dr. Martin
said. “I was always very curious.”
After reading children’s stories and graduating to Mark Twain,
Dr. Martin took up reading biographies. “The book of Abraham
Lincoln… I hated that book,” he laughed. “But when I think back,
I can still remember passages from it. If I didn’t know a word, my
grandmother had me look it up. She’d often quiz me on what I had
just r XY