Broadcast engineer Mark Paul Smith died recently at the age of 62. His family said he passed in Wheat Ridge, Colo., in late June.
“Mark started his career in radio when he was 18 years old at legendary Denver radio station KIMN,” according to information provided by the family. “For the next 44 years Mark worked in radio in the Denver market. Although he was first and foremost a broadcast engineer he was also sometimes heard on the air.”
Smith earned a pilot’s license and flew a single-engine Cessna reporting on Denver’s rush hour. He recorded spots, DJ’d shows “and did just about everything else imaginable related to keeping a radio station up and running.”
Colleague Daniel Hyatt said that among the companies at which Smith held positions as a broadcast engineer or local director of engineering were Jefferson Pilot Communications, Entercom and Audacy.
“Mark wore many hats in the Denver radio industry and was always willing to do whatever it took to get the job done,” Hyatt said. “Once Mark flew a relay pattern in an airplane over the Colorado Front Range to hand off the remote broadcast of the Colorado State Fair 150 miles south of Denver back to the studio.”
John Kennedy, senior vice president of technical operations, said Smith had worked for the company in multiple stints. “He was a fine engineer. He’ll be greatly missed.”
Smith’s friend Rick Crandall wrote on Facebook, “Mark was the chief engineer at KEZW for many of my years and even did board shifts when my morning show was out on remote. The morning of 9/11, I was at the Denver Zoo doing my show on remote, and it was Mark who said to me, ‘Rick, you need to come back to the station right now’ as the twin towers were falling.”
Crandall wrote that Smith’s father Merwin “was a great broadcaster in Denver and a World War II vet so we shared a passion for that generation. More than anything else, Mark was a character, a very colorful character and I will miss him a lot.”
His family said he was “known for his work ethic, his prowess as a broadcast engineer, his wry sense of humor and his soft heart.”
