22 Sep 25 - Resident stories
Live wire: centenarian sparky
At 101, Martin Smyth is not your typical centenarian. Sprightly and busy, he has spent the morning orienteering with his 72-year-old daughter Jackie and several New Plymouth secondary schools.
“Jackie did a lot of cartography. She creates orienteering courses for the schools, so I enjoy watching the event with her,” explains Martin.
Martin will often be seen striding briskly around the Summerset at Pohutukawa Place village, often with a project on the go and a smile on his face. Moving with the energy of a much younger fellow, Martin is a source of inspiration and admiration for residents and staff alike. Known not just for his energy but for his generosity, Martin’s the go-to man for anyone with a stubborn old radio, broken lights or appliance in need of repair. “I’m known as Mr Fix-It,” he says cheerfully. In fact, he has just taken delivery of two boxes of peanut brownies that a grateful resident has baked him as thanks.
A lifelong tinkerer with a sharp engineering mind, Martin spent his entire working life in the electrical industry, with two years as a radar technician in the army during the second world war. “That’s where I learned to fix radios,” he explains.
Post-retirement he became a lifetime member of the New Plymouth Society of Model and Experimental Engineers, pouring his energy into crafting intricately detailed miniature trains for visitors to Pukekura Park to ride. “I had had enough of wires and transistors at that point!” he says. Martin and his late wife, Betty, had a ‘his ‘n’ hers’ locomotive each to drive, built by Martin. “Betty’s was painted in the NZR fruit salad colours,” Martin says.
Martin’s larger steam engine was based on the English Springbok locomotive. While local children were drawn to Martin’s due to its resemblance to Thomas from Thomas the Tank Engine, Betty preferred her diesel engine with its electric motor. “She didn’t like driving mine because she didn’t like the sparks that came from the chimney!” says Martin.
The couple met in Oamaru through their Baptist church when Martin was 24 and Betty was 19. “I couldn’t pin her down for a while,” Martin recalls fondly. “She wanted to sit her Hansard shorthand exams before getting married. She sat and passed them.”
Cut from the same cloth, the couple both worked at the power company, and enjoyed tinkering together. “We did everything together,” Martin says. Their first project was designing and creating a set of bellows made from roller blind material for a photographic enlarger Martin was building. “Betty took apart anything, including a Wurlitzer organ once. We worked out we’d sent 2.5 tonnes of steel to the scrap metal man over five years!”
Other hobbyists benefited from their explorations, with model plane and boat clubs appreciating the tiniest screws and bolts that were saved for them from 56 computers and 500 relays. A keen amateur radio operator, for 15 years Martin volunteered his evenings preparing budding ham radio operators for their amateur radio exams.
Both were fiercely independent, and Martin was 99 before the couple decided to move into Summerset at Pohutukawa Place for an easier life. As two of the very first residents of the serviced apartments in the village centre, the couple were instrumental in creating a positive community culture, throwing themselves into village life. Martin was even the recipient of an award at the village’s very own version of the Oscars. There’s rarely a week that goes by when he’s not at a workbench in the Hobby Shed, quietly coaxing life back into someone’s treasured device or experimenting with a steam-powered engine he has built.
After Betty passed earlier this year, residents and staff rallied around Martin, throwing him a birthday party to celebrate his 101st year. “The cake had a train on it in my engine’s colours!” he says fondly.
Martin is well known at Pohutukawa Place, and as he walks by he often hears people say, “That’s him! The man I told you about that is 101! Remarkable!” Martin credits his longevity to genetics, clean living and staying busy. Respected, admired and quietly legendary, Martin is proof that age really is just a number.
This is an article from the Spring 2025 edition of Summerset Scene magazine