Martha Ellen Ishiguro

Friends in Evansville remember Martha Ellen Ishiguro, who died on September 10, 2026 at 77. Born in Evansville on April 12, 1949, into a Japanese-American household that treated work as a language. Early on, she decided that a paycheck and a handshake should weigh the same. She walked routes that were also neighborhoods, noting what numbers would not say. A meter-reader clipboard with rain cover survived winters that ruined lesser paper. Colleagues still mention a meter-reader clipboard with rain cover. In 1972 she married Dennis. The marriage was not a speech; it was groceries, repairs, and two sons and a daughter walked to school in weather that did not care. When Dennis died in 2019, she kept what still worked: the early walk, the small garden, the call on Sundays. Neighbors remember someone who knew every child's name on the block. She liked early mornings before the heat or the noise. She died in Evansville, among streets she never needed to explain. The radio is still tuned to the station that played while work got done.