CHIMACUM — A man credited with ushering Chimacum School District into the age of technology and providing essential support for the Port Townsend Film Festival has died at the age of 44.
Christopher Martin, a graduate of Chimacum High School who became the district’s technical director, was taken off life support early Monday morning after suffering an apparent massive stroke while riding his motorcycle in Lacey on Saturday.
A memorial service is pending, the family said, and will be announced on his Facebook page, http://tinyurl.com/PDN-Martin.
“He built the technical backbone for the district,” High School Principal Whitney Meissner said of Martin on Monday.
“He always had a smile on his face,” she said. “He loved working and being here.”
Martin had worked as a volunteer for the Port Townsend Film Festival.
“It’s a huge loss for the community because he helped so many people learn technology as a place to learn and experiment,” said Janette Force, executive director of the film festival.
She said that Martin, a volunteer, designed a system for combining several formats under a single digital umbrella that permitted festival jurors to view films in high definition from their homes.
“He was such a little geek [when he was younger],” said Force, who had known Martin since childhood.
“He was always like this. He was really sweet and curious when he was a child as he is today — was, until Saturday.”
According to Lacey Police Department Commander Jim Mack, Martin’s motorcycle struck another car in the early afternoon.
Mack said the investigation is in process.
A woman speaking for the family but who declined to be identified said that Martin was taken to Providence St. Peter Hospital before he was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle where he was placed on life support.
According to a post on his Facebook page from his daughter, Asia Martin, Martin had a stroke resulting in severe brain damage that was related to the wreck.
The family made the decision to take him off life support and filled out the paperwork for him to be an organ donor, according to the post.
Martin was born Jan. 24, 1971 and graduated from Chimacum High School in 1990.
Throughout his high school career, he worked with computers at a time where they were not present in schools, according to Robert Force, Janette’s husband, who was then working as the school district’s technical director.
When Martin graduated, he was immediately hired onto the school’s technology staff where he rose to lead the department.
He worked alone until recently when the district hired an assistant, Meissner said.
Robert Force said that Martin’s technological brilliance was immediately apparent.
After Martin was hired, “it was clear that he knew way more about technology than I did,” he said.
“At that time, he was able to look at machines and understand them at a level that no one else had,” he said.
“He was able to coax things out of them than no one else could.
“At one point, Apple contacted us and asked how we did something they thought was impossible.”
Robert Force said that Martin could have easily gotten a job with a large hardware or software firm but chose to stay in Chimacum.
“He would be sitting at a desk with three or four monitors and it looked like the kind of thing you would see in a science fiction movie,” he said.
“He would wave his hand, one thing would disappear and four others would come up.”
Meissner said that grief counselors are in place but are more involved with the staff than the students.
Meissner said it is too soon to discuss what happens next but said that someone eventually will need to be hired to fill Martin’s job.
Martin was very organized and his work should be understood by any capable technologist “but right now we aren’t sure how much documentation he left and how much he just kept in his head.”
“This is a sad day,” said Stephanie McCleary, the district’s secretary who interacted daily with Martin since she began at the district in 1996.
“It’s so new. We know we will have to replace him. But today is a day of grief,” McCleary said
“Tomorrow we will decide what we need to do to move forward, but right now we are trying to figure out what it looks like without him being here.”
Martin is survived by his daughter, a Chimacum senior; his mother, Therese Renuart of Chimacum; a sister, Katie Drom of Chimacum and two brothers, Ray Renaurt of Utah and Dennis Drom of Chimacum.
He will be cremated and there will be no church service, according to the family’s friend.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
