Former longtime creator of Mount Washington WMTW Ch. Summit No. 8 transmission engineer Marty Engstrom — who debuted in 2002 shortly before his retirement after 38 years — died at age 86 at his home in North Fryeburg, Maine, on Jan. 4, according to his family.
Tom Eastman/Conway Daily Sun
When you talk to old-timers in New Hampshire about “that funny guy who used to do the weather on TV,” there's a divide. In the southern part of the state, they probably think of Al Kaprielian from WNDS but in the northern part, it's “Marty on the Mountain.”
For nearly four decades until his retirement in 2002, Marty Engstrom, who died Jan. 4 at age 86, provided nightly weather broadcasts from the summit of Mount Washington for WMTW in Maine, where he worked as a broadcast engineer. His thick New England accent and the funny little smile he would give at the end of each broadcast endeared him to viewers—including all the young men in my college dorm, who couldn't care less about the news but were gathered around the television set at home. The lounge when Marty appeared on Channel 8, cheering when that smile appeared.
Although WMTW is located in Maine, its transmission from the highest point in the Northeast produced a strong signal in New Hampshire. In the days of rabbit ears and rooftop antennas, before cable became popular, many homes could receive it better than what WMUR got from Manchester or other local stations.
As a result, Marty's reputation became well established in the Granite State as well as the Pine Tree State, where people would stop him on the street and ask for pictures with him all the way to the end.
“He was very down-to-earth,” said Jonathan Van Fleet, editor of the Concord Monitor, who interviewed Marty several times, both at the broadcast building in Mount Washington and at Marty's home in Fryeburg, Maine. “He didn't crave fame but he kind of enjoyed it. He enjoyed it.”
In contrast to Al Kaprielian's exaggerated “Good evening,” there was nothing forced in Marty's tone: “He wasn't ashamed of it. He was thick as butter, but that's the way he talked. He was a very real person.”
Van Fleet said the accent reflected his personality as a “true, frugal Yankee.” “If anything broke in his house, he would fix it himself. … He even packed his own ammunition.
Marty Engstrom began his career in 1964 when weather reporting on local television stations was just beginning to become professional. He won't be on the air today because he wasn't a meteorologist, as he said repeatedly throughout his life. He merely read the weather forecasts as compiled by the people at the Mount Washington Observatory in the building next door.
His real job was to be an engineer. He was hired by WMTW after getting out of the Air Force, and traveled back and forth on the motorway every week to maintain the broadcast equipment and the generators that powered it.
As he often said, Marty didn't know the weather was on TV until he came to work. “On the first day of work, I was told: 'This is the script, and you're going to be in front of the camera. Who am I?' He said in an interview with WMTW when he retired.
And that smile? It started after his boss said he looked too serious, never imagining it would make it into a small New England establishment.
Just goes to show how a little silliness can make a big difference in life.
