If you had never lived in Connecticut during the past 35 years or so…the news that a Dr. Mel Goldstein had passed away this morning would not mean the same thing as it would to anyone who had lived in Connecticut during that time.

It is possible you might have seen him once upon a time, when his ever sunny face was shown across the nation on something called “Satellite News Channel”, a would-be competitor to CNN in the 1980’s. Or you might had caught his name as the author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Weather”, which despite its catchy name is not a required textbook in the education of anyone who purports to forecast just what Mother Nature will do on any given day.

Or hour.

But if you were lucky enough to have listened to radio or watched television in Connecticut since the 1970’s, you were probably familiar with the man known simply as “Dr. Mel”.

He was Connecticut’s Weatherman.

To be precise Melvin Goldstein was a Meteorologist, as in a true scientist who held a PhD in the field. (Thus the Doctor title) But he was also one of those people who left a lasting impression on anyone he ever met. He was, in my humble experience as his would-be boss for some eight years at WTNH-TV, one of the most unbelievably “Sunny” people I’ve ever known.

I don’t mean that as any kind of weather pun. But the guy just could light up any day you saw him on. And on days when the weather was not so nice, Dr. Mel was like a little kid in a candy store. Even into his 66th year.

He knew more about weather than most who claim to know anything about it. He authored two books on the subject, and could talk for hours and hours about the subject without once ever losing his enthusiasm for it.

He did all this over the past 15 years of his life while typically in excruciating pain. He was a bit of a medical phenomenon–having survived the onset of Multiple Myeloma, a particularly nasty cancer of the plasma cells in bone marrow, for much longer than the medicos ever gave him a chance. Mel Goldstein, his spine fused in two places and walking with the help of a cane, never missed an opportunity to talk to other cancer patients about the journey with the disease. He never missed an opportunity to flash that smile of his and make anyone feel a little better.

For me, it was a little more personal.

Dr. Mel reminded me greatly of my grandfather, my mother’s father, who passed away when I was teenager. Grandfather too passed after struggling with a long term health issue, but not letting on how much it had devoured him. But both my grandfather, and Mel–who I often called my surrogate grandfather–were men of simple statements and profound wisdom. They were both men who could make me laugh, at the oddest of times. They were men who had an amazing amount of knowledge and were always willing to share any of that knowledge with me.

“The Good Doctor”, a nickname that Mel was called by our station’s General Manager at the time, was just that. A Good Weatherman. A Good Colleague. A Good Friend. A Good Man. In other words, an all around Good Guy who will be missed, most of all by his wife Arlene and his daughters Laura and Melodie,
but also by his many friends, colleagues, from a long career behind the microphone and in front of the camera.

And by those of us who he touched forever with that smiling face and sunny disposition, whatever the weather was.

Thanks Dr. Mel for the all the forecasts and all the friendship. Hopefully they needed somebody to do the forecast, in that place where it is always warm and sunny.