Hundreds celebrate life of Bud Leavitt at Old Town service

OLD TOWN – As the coffin holding the body of Ralph W. “Bud” Leavitt Jr. was wheeled out of the Holy Family Parish here on Monday morning, the church choir, joined by some of those in attendence, paid a final tribute to one of Maine’s most prominent personalities.

“Oh, May I go a wandering, Beyond the day I die …” they sang, slightly altering the words from “The Happy Wanderer” theme song from Leavitt’s two television shows.

“Oh, May I always laugh and sing, Beneath God’s clear, blue sky… Val-de ri… Val-de ra… Val-de ra… Val-de ha ha ha ha ha ha. …”

With that, Bud Leavitt’s long life had come full circle.

In the same church where he had been baptized, where he had buried one brother and both of his parents, and where he had married his beloved wife, Barbara, Leavitt’s life was celebrated with laughter and tears.

More than 300 people attended the Mass of Christian Burial for Leavitt of Hampden, the former executive sports editor and longtime outdoor columnist for the Bangor Daily News. Leavitt died last Tuesday in Rancho Mirage, Calif., after a prolonged battle with cancer. He was 77.

Leavitt left a long trail of memories in his wake, some of which were touched on by four men who remembered him Monday.

“We’ve shed a lot of tears, but those who knew Bud should feel joyous,” said Sharland “Charlie” Leavitt, Bud’s brother, at the start of the service. “We have had a lot of memories.”

Leavitt was remembered as a proud, caring, family man, an avid outdoorsman, and a consummate people person.

Dr. G. Richard Polkinghorn, Leavitt’s son-in-law, his physician in California, and the last of three eulogizers, summed it up best.

“For all the love he had for his friends and the times he would spend fishing with them, the thing he loved more than all the fish in Canada and all the bread in Boston – he loved his family,” Polking-horn said.

“When the time had come,” Polkinghorn added, “I was ready to use everything I had – we had all the technology lined up so we could stop this day from happening. (Bud) went out on his own, with his head up, without machines. When he could go no longer, he stopped and he smiled.”

That smile, the one that had brightened so many people’s days during his life, again brought light to many people in his death.

“Every once in a while a person with light and grace comes into our lives,” said the Rev. Clifford Moors, who officiated at the Mass. “Bud was certainly one of those people.”

“In this church, we believe only the body is gone,” said former New England Patriots coach Dick MacPherson, like Leavitt an Old Town native. “The soul stays and the spirit stays. And what a spirit he had.”

MacPherson also touched on Leavitt’s writing ability and what it has meant to the people who have read his columns.

“He made people fall in love with the Atlantic salmon, even if you didn’t know what it looked like or what it smelled like,” MacPherson said during his eulogy.

“He covered things like no one else could and made them so much better. Is there any better orange than the one in the sky at sunset that Bud Leavitt described?”

Like a classic Bud Leavitt anecdote, the ceremony was not without humor.

At one point, MacPherson stopped to thank a handful of game wardens, wearing their distinctive red jackets, for coming to pay tribute to a man who had so often written about them.

“It’s good to see the game wardens here,” MacPherson said. “They scared the hell out of us when we were younger, out Costigan way, but it’s great to see them here today.”

Monday’s service also attracted some regional celebrities as well as Leavitt’s writing colleagues and many of his readers.

Ken Coleman, the longtime voice of the Boston Red Sox; Rep.-elect John Baldacci of Bangor; and WCSH-TV’s Bill Green were familiar faces among the Holy Family’s pews.

Leavitt may have been most widely known for his friendship with Boston Red Sox great Ted Williams.

Williams, who is recovering from a stroke in Florida, did not attend Monday’s service. He spoke with the family last Tuesday.