As two individuals who worked with Ed Winchester for many years before he retired from Maine Public Broadcasting in the early 1990s, we noted his recent passing with sadness.

Edward E. Winchester was a quiet, modest man, fond of describing himself as “just an engineer.” Missing from that brief description is any suggestion of Ed’s lifetime of service to the broadcast industry in Maine.

Ed Winchester was a pioneering engineer in bringing television to the Greater Bangor area. He didn’t speak often of past adventures in keeping the flickering, black-and-white images on home television screens, but occasionally would reminisce about working in sleet and snow to repair transmission lines on top of a nearby mountain.

It was with public broadcasting in this state, however, that Ed made his greatest contribution. He joined Maine Public Broadcasting Network in 1963, becoming general manager in 1980. His devotion to MPBN and the quality television and radio programming it brought to his beloved home state resulted in a greatly expanded network of television and radio stations serving viewers and listeners throughout Maine and the maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Those of us who worked for him remember him as not only a thoughtful leader, but a kind and generous man.

When Maine Public Broadcasting honored Ed Winchester by naming its technical center after him, and when the New England Academy of Television Arts and Sciences recognized him for his services to the industry, Ed said: “I was just doing my job.” He was, after all, a modest man from Maine.

Public Broadcasting owes that modest man an enormous debt.

Mary Lou Colbath

Orono

Barbara M. Beers

Dixmont