Martha Ardella Bartenbach

We share with great sorrow the peaceful passing of Martha Ardella Bartenbach on August 10th, 2026.

A beloved wife to her late husband, Wilhelm, Martha will be missed by her daughters, Angelika (Billy) and Margarete (Angelo), her grandchildren, Jessica (Matthew), Michael, Chelsea, and Danielle, her great-grandchildren, Lorelei and Louis, her sister, Jane, and countless other family members and friends.

Born April 6th, 1942, to Elizabeth and Earl Hendrix, Martha was the fifth of eight siblings and grew up in Kokomo and North Manchester, Indiana. As a student, she was involved in choir, debate, and theatre. She also worked as a counselor at Camp Alexander Mack and as a disc jockey for the local radio station. Martha was a dedicated member of the Church of the Brethren, where she met her husband Wilhelm in 1962 through her work with the Brethren Volunteer Service. After she spent a year volunteering with BVS in Germany, Martha and Wilhelm married in 1964 and moved to Puerto Rico, where they attended Interamerican University and started their family. They then moved to Denver, Colorado, where they finished their master's degrees in library science before moving to Queens, New York in the late 1960s.

Martha considered herself a New Yorker, and she loved going to the theater and acting as a tour guide for all the family and friends who came to visit. She started her career at the Queens Public Library, then became a school librarian, where she shared her love of reading with children and young adults. She spent the final years of her career at the United Nations International School in Queens.

Martha's love of travel was a defining feature of her life, and she visited close to 100 countries on every continent except Antarctica. She loved traveling to Germany with Wilhelm to visit family. After Wilhelm's passing in 2006, she especially enjoyed her travels with her sister, Jane. Martha was also a passionate activist who always advocated for peace and civil rights, whether it was marching with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s or protesting for social justice and human rights in 2025. Above all else, Martha loved spending time with her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, with whom she shared her love of travel, activism, education, theatre, literature, collecting, baking, and spontaneously bursting into song. She will be dearly missed.

In memory of Martha, the family has asked that donations be made to The Bartenbach Foundation Trust, dedicated to peace, education, and health, by sending a check to 173-58 Croydon Road, Jamaica Estates, New York, 11432.