Last of Siblings Leaves Westminster School : 13 Graduates Watch 14th Success Story

If eight are enough, would 14 count as amazing? Friday night, 13 brothers and sisters watched kid sister Grace, who happens to be 14 years old, become the last of 14 Martin children to graduate from the eighth grade at Blessed Sacrament School in Westminster.

“It is amazing,” sighed mother Pat Martin on Friday. “The hardest part I think was helping with the homework, but today I’m finished with all of that.”

Over 22 years, Pat and her husband, James, have ferried nine sons and five daughters from their five-bedroom Reading Avenue home in Westminster to the Roman Catholic school. They wore out three vans in the process. The eldest of the brood, Charles, is 33 now.

Son Peter, 17, recalled an accident 10 years ago when the van was struck by another car and flipped over. Luckily, none of the half-dozen Martins or seven other neighborhood children got hurt. “But you can imagine how crazy it must have looked to see these kids just keep coming out of this upside-down van,” Peter said.

Grace, a cheerleader and student council member while at Blessed Sacrament, said sometimes it was “kind of funny” having so many brothers and sisters go ahead of her through the school’s kindergarten through eighth grade. “We’d try to avoid each other at recess and lunch,” she said, laughing. “We saw enough of each other at home. And one teacher used to call me by the name of my sister.”

Grace, who next year will attend St. Anthony’s High School in Long Beach, said she would like to become a teacher or work with deaf people. Her 5-year-old nephew lost his hearing two years ago. Along with five of her brothers and sisters, she has been taking sign language classes ever since, she said.

Friday afternoon, their mother was making final arrangments for a family dinner at a local Italian restaurant and making certain that the whole clan would show up for graduation. “This is the first graduation where they will all be together,” she said, “but I started reminding them two years ago, sticking notes in their calendars.”

The restaurant, she said, was setting aside an area for the family and offering three specialties for dinner: “With food, there’s no pleasing 14 kids.”