1917-1994 Bud Leavitt NEWS outdoor writer and TV personality

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Ralph William Leavitt Jr., a legendary journalist with the Bangor Daily News for nearly half a century and a nationally renowned outdoor columnist and television personality, died early Tuesday morning after a long battle with cancer.

The man best known as “Bud” was 77. He died at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif. Arrangements for his funeral were not announced Tuesday.

“To many sports-minded people in northeastern Maine, Bud was the Bangor Daily News,” said Publisher Richard J. Warren. “I was always amazed, traveling with Bud, at the number of people who spoke with him.

“He was recognized and approached everywhere,” added Warren. “Bud loved newspapers, especially this newspaper. It was my great privilege to know him as a colleague and as a friend.”

“Bud Leavitt was always a larger-than-life figure when I was a college kid in Orono,” remembered Boston Globe columnist Tony Chamberlain. “That never diminished. He was sort of like a living folk tale from the Maine woods.”

Leavitt was born in Old Town on Jan. 13, 1917, the son of Ralph W. Sr. and Elise Leavitt. His father worked for the Penobscot Chemical Fiber Co. in Old Town where he was a union leader.

Leavitt was married to the late Barbara Harding, whom he often referred to in his columns as “the Pearl of Her Sex.” Mrs. Leavitt died in October 1989. The Leavitts lived in Hampden and had two daughters, Lisa Tozier of North New Portland and Liz Polkinghorn of Palm Desert, Calif.

One brother, Charlie, lives in Bangor. He was predeceased by another brother, Paul.

Leavitt began his journalism career with the Bangor Daily Commercial in 1934 when he was 17. He was one of the writers who covered the Brady Gang shootout outside Dakin’s Sporting Goods in Bangor in 1937.

He served during World War II as a civilian worker for the U.S. Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1946.

He exhibited his keen sense of humor in describing his tour of duty.

“I sampled the finest beverages in the European theater; the tastiest wines in Spain, Portugal and France, and was never injured from several falls off a bar stool.”

Leavitt joined the Bangor Daily News as a general sportswriter in 1946.

He began his career as the NEWS’ outdoor columnist two years later and, in 1953, the “Bud Leavitt Show” first aired on the Hildreth Television Network. The program, geared primarily toward hunting and fishing, was broadcast for 20 years. Leavitt filmed his last show in 1973.

His successful book “Twelve Months in Maine” was published four years later.

He returned to the TV screen in 1978 on the Maine Public Broadcasting Network. The show, “Woods and Waters,” was rated the nation’s No. 1 outdoor program for two consecutive years by a national panel in Denver, Colo. The Outdoor Writers of America chose it as the best in its field in 1979.

“Woods and Waters” became a national PBS program in 1979.

Leavitt appeared on the network television show “American Sportsman” and was on various coast-to-coast radio shows.

His national exposure was significantly enhanced by TV appearances with his close personal friend, former Boston Red Sox slugger and Hall-of-Famer Ted Williams. The two did several commercials for the Nissen Baking Co.

“The relationship between Bud and Ted Williams tells it all,” said retired Portland outdoor columnist Gene Letourneau. “He could have picked any sportswriter around to go (fishing) with him. But he chose Bud because he knew Bud was reliable and wouldn’t go off on a tangent. Bud knew what the hell he was writing about.”

Letourneau knew Leavitt for 50 years, considered him one of his best friends, and called him “a good sportswriter and an all-around good man.”

Besides Nissen commercials, Leavitt made a commercial for Ben’s insect repellent with the late Clara Peller, who made famous the phrase “Where’s the Beef?”

John Edes was an Ellsworth High School sports star with fond memories of Leavitt’s sportswriting career.

“He was so good to all of us,” said Edes, now of Edes Financial Services in Providence, R.I. “He was always writing big articles. One time, he interviewed all of us in our homes. He got inside our family lives. He built us up greater than we were. He related to young people so well. He made young people feel good about themselves.”

Edes also noted that Leavitt had colorful nicknames for people he wrote about like “Jumping Jack Scott” and the moniker Leavitt had for him: “Big Jawn.”

In a Yankee magazine story by Mel Allen, Leavitt’s appeal was recounted by Hall-of-Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson.

In 1971, just after Robinson had hit .320 in the Orioles-Pirates World Series, Robinson, famous broadcaster Curt Gowdy and Leavitt were filming an episode of “American Sportsman” while fishing on the Piscataquis River.

Robinson said a pickup truck stopped near the threesome and an elderly man peered out at them. The man blurted “Jeesus Christmas, Bud Leavitt!!”

Leavitt took great pride in his writing. He also knew he was being read by people of all ages.

“I write for everybody,” said Leavitt. “Everyone has an interest in hunting or fishing or camping or snowmobiling or cross-country skiing. I have had the wide-open field.

“I know this sounds very narrow, but I can’t imagine anyone doing anything else,” said Leavitt. “It enabled me to marry a wonderful woman, achieve a level of financial security, raise a family, educate my daughters and meet wonderful people from coast to coast.”

Leavitt continued to write his daily outdoor column and took on the responsibilities of executive sports editor at the NEWS.

He proved to be an exceptional editor. Through his easy-going manner and progressive thinking, Leavitt enabled a stable of young writers to develop their creativity. They flourished under his innovative guidance.

He was quick to praise his writers for jobs well done, and he genuinely cared for his writers, his friends and their families.

His writing covered much more than the outdoors. Leavitt spent several years covering the Boston Red Sox’s spring training camps for the NEWS.

His wonderfully descriptive prose could paint a clear and concise picture of the events, people or teams that were his subjects. He was to outdoor journalism what Norman Rockwell was to art.

“Reading Leavitt is like listening to the small, intimate talk on a riverbank that makes the hours slip by, or, in a diner during hunting season at 6 in the morning,” Allen wrote. “Talk of fly tying, bird dogs, tracking snow. The column is stuffed with names, odd little recipes, and, of course, adventures. Bud, who is always packing for Cuba or Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories or Newfoundland, or the Florida Keys to bonefish with his pal, Ted Williams, is able to take his readers to places most people will never go.”

One example of Leavitt’s descriptive prose appeared in a Nov. 8, 1988, column dedicated to a dying hunting dog named Amos.

“It wasn’t but a short while ago that the scene was beach towels and blankets, Frisbees and Coppertone, watermelon and deviled eggs, boiled lobster and steamers,” Leavitt wrote. “Though he never was observed in a bathing suit, somehow, Amos fit nicely into the picture.

“Then there were the pleasant sounds of summer: engines that hummed to a quick start, barking dogs, waves lapping the huge rocks on the ocean bank, the low whine of a salmon reel, gap-toothed kids singing day camp songs at Camp Prentiss. Everywhere, laughter.

“Amos’ eyes danced to laughter.

“All the sights and sounds must be rushing back in a montage: the duck blind, hamburgers sizzling over charcoal, the pungent bite of outboard exhaust, sunups that burned holes in the morning mist, sundowns that set the clouds ablaze, sailboats marooned on a mirror-slick Penobscot Bay begging for a puff of wind.

“Amos lived for those sights and sounds.”

Chamberlain said, “An outdoor writer has to create the outdoors in people’s kitchens and Bud was the best at it.”

Leavitt also often wrote columns that were informative and helpful.

One column gave fishermen a three-step method for removing a hook from a fish’s mouth. Another discussed the proper way to dress during a frigid Maine winter day.

He was inducted into the Maine Sports Hall of Fame in 1985, and a 6,000-acre wildlife management area in Charleston bears his name.

Leavitt retired as the NEWS executive sports editor and outdoor editor in the fall of 1988, but he continued to write a weekly outdoor column. His final column was published on Wednesday, Nov. 30.

When he retired, he had cranked out 13,104 columns for the NEWS.