A Good Man Gone

I was saddened to hear that my friend Marty Wertz passed away while I was gone. I need to say a few words about Marty here.

I first met him when he came to work for my company several years ago. He and his wife Krickett were both involved in the film industry in Hollywood. Marty worked for the biggest post-production house in L.A. and was in charge of the Disney account. His team took an entire floor of the Ascent Media offices. They both came to a point where they wanted something else and found Astoria as the answer.

Marty came to work for us in sales and he was the kind of guy you just liked right away. He loved baseball. He needed MLB on line on his computer or life wasn't complete. I loved his stories about L.A. and people he knew there from the artists who would prepare every frame of a film to go to DVD and the restoration work they did on old feature films in danger of being lost forever to the studio big shots he did business with on a first name basis. Even though he was here the phone calls from movie people never stopped because he had the biggest rolodex in tinsel town and often could connect people who were working on a project. When he left us he went back to post production sales but was so valuable to them he worked from Astoria as he pleased and only had to travel to the home office occassionally.

He loved music and played guitar. He would talk about his love of the California desert and his younger days exploring them. He loved Astoria and made many friends, like me, who will remember him.

Goodbye my friend.