BDN sports staff remembers Bud

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To know Bud Leavitt was to know at least one story that made him unique among all of the people we know.

Members of the Bangor Daily News Sports Desk have at least one good “Bud story” because everyone on the desk worked with him or for him before he retired as executive sports editor in 1988.

He was 77 when he died of cancer last Tuesday in California.

This is the day when Bud Leavitt will be remembered by many people during a 10 a.m. funeral Mass at the Holy Family Parish Church in Old Town, the city of his birth.

These are some of the stories that the sports crew remembers about the big man who was our boss:

My father’s fame

Bud gave my father, the late Percy Haskell, his 15 minutes of fame about 15 years ago after my dad had shot his first deer.

My father had been an occasional hunter for most of his life, but he had never gotten a deer until he was early into his 50s.

Finally, in the back field of the family homestead in South Levant, dad brought down a nice buck during the November hunt. It was among the high points of his life.

Two mornings later, Bud wrote in his column that Percy Haskell’s long hunt had finally been rewarded and that, because of his persistence, the Haskell family would be feasting on venison that winter. – Bob Haskell

Paint this

When I was serving my apprenticeship as a printer in the composing room of this newspaper, Bud came over to me one night and asked, “How many paintings have you got on hand?”

“A half-dozen or so,” I answered. “Why?”

“I want to put them on my television show tomorrow night. Greal exposure. Be out to the station around 5 o’clock.”

To appreciate this anecdote, you have to know it was mid-January, the temperature was below zero and the Bangor area was buried with snow. Although I was as nervous as a frog in a pond full of pickerel, things went well.

Bud prompted me with questions and we talked about how hunting and fishing experiences provided unlimited ideas for paintings and stories. When the segment was finished, I gathered my paintings and headed for home.

Early the next morning the phone rang and a man’s voice asked, “Are you the feller that was on Bud’s show last night?” When I answered in the affirmative, the caller’s next question was, “How much would you charge me to paint a deer on my mailbox?”

Watching the wind-blown snow swirling past the kitchen window, I politely told him he’d be better off to go down to the hardware store and buy a decal of a deer.

Bud loved it. When I told him, he laughed and shook his head saying, “See what I mean? You couldn’t buy that kind of exposure.” – Tom Hennessey

Celtics contact

There were a lot of reasons for a young sportswriter from Maine to admire and, yes, even envy Bud Leavitt.

I admired and envied Bud most for getting into this business back in the days when sports were still accessible to the average working stiff. Bud got in on the ground floor with people like Ted Williams and Red Auerbach, which gave him access at levels you just don’t get any more at a newspaper this size.

Two days before the Celtics were to play the Lakers in Game 1 of the 1986 NBA Finals, Bud called me into his office. He wanted me to go down to Boston Garden and cover the Celts home games in the series.

I turned pale. Media demand had become so great you had to get your reservations in to cover the NBA Finals one month in advance. Further, not just any media outlet could get in. The NBA picked and chose, trying to maximize exposure.

After telling Bud this, he laughed his Bud laugh and said: “Wait just a minute.”

He picked up the phone and called the Celtics front office. He got some media flack who told him basically what I had told him, that it was impossible to get a reporter in so late.

Bud hung up, then dialed again.

“Give me Red Auerbach’s office,” he said into the phone. The receptionist asked who was calling.

“Bud Leavitt,” he boomed.

Ten seconds later:

“Red..? Bud. I’ve got a guy here I want to send down to cover the home games and they’re telling me downstairs we can’t do it…. Thanks.”

Thanks to Bud Leavitt, NEWS readers got first-hand coverage and a young reporter got the experience of his professional life. – Mike Dowd

Birth of a title

My first day in the Sports Department was Sept. 4, 1979. My column was to debut Sept. 10. I had six days to come up with a title for the state’s first daily sports column about females.

Bud had this great facility for writing headlines. He wrote his own.

Our favorite, I think, was “More bunnies; more banging” that someone let slip through when his column was about an exceptional season of rabbit hunting.

In any event, I’m not a headline writer, and I’m not good at putting titles on things, either.

No matter what I came up with, it didn’t grab me; and it didn’t grab Bud.

By Friday morning, Sept. 7, I was desperate. But, as he would more than once, Bud came to my rescue.

In that wonderfully, booming, drawn-out voice of his – and in the special manner he always addressed me in the office – he called out, “Mrs. Averill,” while beckoning me to his office.

“I’ve got it,” he said. “It came to me this morning. I had to get up about 3:30. I was on the john. And, bingo. There it was: `The Other Half.’ ”

I looked at him, incredulous.

“The Other Half?” I asked. “What about `The 51 Percent?’ ”

Bud knew the title of the column wasn’t important to me. It was the fact the column would appear every day, in every edition of this newspaper.

During his last “official” day as executive sports editor in 1988, I asked if he would mind if we removed the title and just went with my byline.

“Go for it,” he said. “You don’t need a title. You’re you.” – Joni Averill

Sharp sportswriter?

In March 1987, Bud assigned me to cover the University of Maine’s spring baseball trip in Miami. It was a great assignment, being paid to watch and write about baseball games under the Southern sun.

The Bears had a 4-4 week and then left for a series in Louisiana. I had a one-day wait to catch my flight home and was going to try being a tourist until Bud called and told me to catch the train for a 225-mile trip north to cover a Red Sox spring training game in Winter Haven.

He said if I caught the early train, I’d be able to check into my hotel and then catch a taxi to the ballpark in time to catch the game’s 1 p.m. start. He added that he’d call ahead to get my credentials.

Bud was a veteran of Sox spring training trips, but his estimate for the time of the train ride was way off and I didn’t arrive until 12:45 p.m. The taxi showed up 15 minutes later and I decided to go right to the park.

Fortunately, it was a quick ride. I was left at the gate and greeted by the sounds of the game already under way. I grabbed my suitcase, clipboard and tape recorder and jogged to the press box. I arrived out of breath, shirt untucked, and sweat running down my forehead and introduced myself to Dick Bresciani, the Sox media director.

I’ll never forget his sarcastic greeting. “You’re the young sportswriter Bud Leavitt said was sharp?” – Joe McLaughlin

Worth 1,000 words

Bud would take two or three weeks off from time to time – covering the Red Sox at spring training, bird hunting in South Dakota, salmon fishing in New Brunswick, any of a number of reasons. During one long trip in the summer of ’83, I decided to have a little fun with him.

While he was away, my wife Abbie and 14-month-old daughter Holly stopped in at the office. Holly went right to Bud’s chair and sat down. That gave me the idea.

I asked NEWS photographer Bob DeLong to take a picture of Holly sitting there, then wrote a note about how Sports Editor Bill Warner and I were looking ahead to the time when we would need to find a new outdoor writer, so we were interviewing young candidates and checking to see how they warmed to the position.

Bud took the joke well, as he usually did, and then surprised us by using my prank, including the picture and note, as the basis for a column.

I was hesitant about him using it because I didn’t know how the readers would react. Bud had no problem at all. “People will remember that column for years,” he said.

Later, Bud told us that a copy of that column hung in a lodge in Greenville for two months.

The outdoors was Bud’s vehicle, but what drove it was the people. – Dave Barber

A final lesson

Over the past few days, I’ve read a lot of accounts of how Bud touched so many people’s lives during his jam-packed, 77-year run through life.

The most profound effect he had on me, however, came not during his life but following his death.

I spoke with Bud on the telephone two weeks ago. He asked how work was going, how my family was doing, how my son was.

Everybody knew he was not well, but the voice I heard that day suggested something even worse – that the end really was near.

After hanging up, I had made a mental note to drop Bud a line thanking him for everything he had done for me during the time he had served as our executive sports editor. I placed the note on the back burner of my mind, intending to get back to it.

I never did.

So as I look back on Bud Leavitt today, I do not see a man who taught me a lesson about journalism, or about sports, or about fishing – though he opined to me on many occasions about all of those subjects. I see, simply, one final lesson about life.

As we celebrate the holidays and the end of another year, especially one that has been incredibly tough on the people of this sports desk, please remember those you care about.

Take time just to say “thank you” to that person who doesn’t expect it. Or, just let somebody know you still care.

If you wait, it may become too late. – John Nash

Debt of gratitude

The death of Bud, our link to Maine’s outdoors and the people who enjoy its wonders, has helped me bring my own career into better perspective.

Bud’s passing reminded me what a tremendous influence he had in initiating my career and helping it flourish.

Upon my arrival at the NEWS on a part-time basis in 1979, Bud was a busy columnist and editor whose frequent travel and early-morning working hours made it difficult for us to talk at length.

But, over the years, he always made time for me. It was Bud Leavitt who opened the door for me to begin writing about sports.

He started me out gradually, working me into the rotation as a backup high school writer. Later, he assigned me to my first real beats, which were high school cross country, track and field, and skiing.

While it was exciting to expand my horizons, I frequently doubted my abilities. But Bud never let me get down on myself.

Numerous times, Bud called me into his office to tell me what a great job he thought I was doing. Coming from the state’s best-known sportswriter, I had no reason to doubt him.

I always left Bud’s office feeling better about myself because of what he had said. Like a player inspired by a rousing halftime speech by his coach, I went back to work fired up.

We worked hard for Bud because he genuinely cared about us and our families. I owe him a great debt of gratitude. – Pete Warner