Martin Robert Silge

Martin passed away peacefully at his Fitch Mountain home on December 6, 2023 from cancer he'd dealt with off and on for nearly 20 years.

He was born in San Francisco and grew up in a close-knit neighborhood in Oakland. The son of German American parents, he spoke German before English. The family kept many of their German traditions, including the making of bratwurst sausages, which Marty carried on.

After graduating from Oakland H.S. in 1957, Marty enrolled at Cal Poly with the aim of becoming an engineer, but he eventually graduated from UC Davis with a Food Science degree. It was at Davis that he met and married his first wife, Aileen Hohmann. Their son Karl was born in 1963.

After an amicable divorce, Marty accepted a job with Zeiss Optical Instruments of Germany. After a while he moved back to northern California, where he worked in the food industry for decades, focusing on dried fruit and nuts. Early on he did some troubleshooting at the prune dehydrator in Healdsburg. He also worked at Mariani Packing and Sun-Diamond Growers, eventually going into the consulting business.

One early employer was Sun-Maid Raisins. Marty developed their Sun-Maid Raisin Bread, but the key development was when his co-worker Grace introduced him to her daughter Ellen in late June of 1972. To say they hit it off is an understatement–they were married in Grace's living room two months later and celebrated their 51st wedding anniversary in August 2023. Their son Robert was born in 1976.

Marty's happy memories of his family spending summer vacations in Fetter's Springs near Calistoga inspired the 1986 acquisition of one and a half acres on Fitch Mountain outside of Healdsburg. He and Ellen enjoyed inviting friends there for weekends that usually involved barbecuing and hot-tubbing. After retirement they moved up to Fitch Mountain permanently, building their dream house in 2005.

Marty's favorite activities were cooking, hosting (think bratwurst parties and Indonesian rijsttafel), and telling jokes. He was renowned for pulling his little black Daytimer out of his shirt pocket to cue them up, organized by category, audience, and level of appropriateness. He was handy with tools, and he enjoyed taking and organizing photos of vacation travels and patio parties. Very detail-oriented, he applied himself assiduously to managing financial matters. He was a Trustee and then Treasurer of the Fitch Mountain Association for many years and was a member of the Healdsburg Kiwanis.

A memorial service will be held at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Healdsburg on January 27, 2024 at 2:00 p.m.

Published in Healdsburg Tribune · January 9, 2024