Remembering Marty Engstrom with Retiring Journalist Steve Minich of WMTW TV
Listen here: https://feeds.podetize.com/ep/Ohr9UZlBO/media
It's not too much of a reach to describe the three states of the Northeast that were the ancestral home of my forebears in the Wabanaki Nation as an informal confederacy still, now composed of an even more diverse populace. But today, we don't look back to precolonial times or colonial times but to the more recent past.
To those who's memories extend back into the 1950s and 60s you will remember a time long before smart phones and computers - the days when television was a new phenomenon when the evening news was broadcast from towers and transmitters in long archs, crossing the land and covering major swaths of all three states.
This year witnessed the passing of one icon of the early days of broadcasting, Marty Engstrom, whose residence in Fryeburg, Maine was but one place that he planted his flag but not the one for which he will be most remembered. That local was at 6,288 feet above sea level inside and outside of the Mount Washington Weather observatory atop New England's highest peak Mount Washington, known as Agiocochook by the Abenaki people.
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| The Smile that Charmed Northern New England Marty Engstrom ended his weather forecast every night except his very first this way. |
Though his nightly weather forecast from the top of Mount Washington was rarely more than one minute long, it was a minute that charmed the folks of the tri-state region to the extent that today, more than 20 years since his retirement, he is remembered with such fondness. Marty was, for all intents and purposes, our very first rock star.
When the Madison Avenue folks told WMTW that they needed to take that "hick" who did the weather forecast off the air, and they tried, the blowback from the public had them reversing their decision in less than a few weeks. Marty had captured our hearts with that goofy smile and a genuine spirit of good will and humility.
When my mom booked him to speak at the annual dinner of the Campton/Thornton Women's Club back in the mid 60s, they sold so many tickets that the event was transitioned to a standing-room-only affair, with groupies of every age and gender. Long after his retirement, demand for Marty and his slide show remained strong.
Through many of those years a once-wet-behind-the-ears journalist named Steve Minich who had moved to Maine from Florida, where he had cut his teeth on sports reporting beginning at only 17, regularly found himself reporting on Marty and becoming friends with him, even as his own star ascended in the television media landscape.
Now retired himself, Steve Minich reflects on his memories of Marty and speculates a bit on his own future with Wayne King an eager fan of both men.
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| Steve Minich Covers Marty's last weather forecast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNATQANryFc |
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The Stone Arch Bridge, Hancock NH
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