Aug. 5, 1963 - Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who is 64 years old, married Joan Martin, a 23-year-old Government worker, in a simple church ceremony today. Justice Douglas and Miss Martin were wed in Buffalo’s Unitarian Universalist Church, then left for a month’s camping and hiking in the mountains of Montana and Washington. The Justice’s second wife, Mrs. Mercedes Douglas, 46, won an uncontested divorce on the ground of cruelty last week. She charged that Douglas had told her repeatedly that he no longer cared for her. He was divorced in 1953 by his first wife, who claimed he left her “abandoned and alone while engaged in his work and travels to remote places in the world.” The bride, a graduate of Pennsylvania’s Allegheny College in the class of 1962, had worked after graduation for the Agency of International Development. She was an administrative assistant in the agency’s Office of Personnel Administration from June 1962 until last March. She reportedly met Justice Douglas in 1961 when he gave a lecture at the college. They were introduced by a faculty member because she was interested in his writings and was preparing a paper on his political philosophy. “She discussed the project with him when he came to the college,” said the faculty member. “She did a very good job on the project.” Mrs. John Martin, the bride’s mother, was asked today how she felt about her daughter marrying a man nearly three times her age. She replied: “We promised my daughter and Mr. Douglas that we would make no comment.”
