“I'll tell you the story." That's how Fritz Wetherbee has started his segments on WMUR TV's New Hampshire Chronicle for nearly 25 years, spinning old yarns and telling local trivia to viewers. Now, the iconic TV storyteller is retiring.
Wetherbee sat down with NHPR Morning Edition Host Rick Ganley to talk about his love of the state — and the curiosities of local history — and to tell us some of his story.
Fritz Wetherbee, beatnik.
I was a self-professed beatnik in the early 60s. I played the coffee houses in New York, wrote all this poetry. It was a kind of slam poetry that I wrote. I was early on that. ‘It's the surest of the tourist towns, the greatest to explore, color clashing, frantic flashing, golden glaring, dirty daring, Broadway bopping…’ How's that for words?
Once back in New Hampshire, Wetherbee became a local journalist and broadcaster- but was skeptical when he was approached by News Nine.
What happened was that they got in touch with me and they said, can you do us a New Hampshire story every night? I said, of course I can't! It takes a full week to do a produced program. Sometimes it takes a full month to do a 5-minute program… and they said, 'Well, how about up against the wall? (Meaning stand in front of a camera and tell a story).'
I said, sure, I can do that because I'd been doing it on radio for all that time. So they put me on the air and that's generally what I did.
Part of the charm in Wetherbee's segments is the focus on the unique quirks of provincial New Hampshire life- which he sees disappearing.
There used to be a time when it was all different- you could tell the difference in an accent from the White Mountains to one down in Seabrook; Seabrook had a whole bunch of people that had an accent that didn't sound like anything else in New Hampshire. There really were provincials like that. I mean, I'm a provincial, but a real provincial is somebody who just is within that, in that realm.
He still finds the state special and different from its neighbors.
I do love New Hampshire, and, I think that comes across… We're not Vermont, we're not Maine, but we are something completely different.
Fritz Wetherbee’s axiom:
If you're on TV all you have to be is more interesting than the conversation in that room that you're getting into would be if you weren't there… it's a very low threshold. So you could relax and kind of be there… and so you allow that to happen. What do I hope they get out of it? ‘Well, that was fun.'
