After spending a lifetime as the voice of Baxter State Park, Irvin “Buzz” Caverly is retiring.

Citing health concerns, the park director made a sudden announcement Tuesday that he will leave his job July 1 to enjoy life with Jan, his wife of more than four decades.

“It’s time. We’ve had 46 good years,” he said by telephone shortly after a private announcement to park staff Tuesday afternoon.

Caverly spoke of rising with the sun every day to travel from his East Corinth home to his Millinocket office, then working overnight in the park while the boat and motor he bought several years ago have sat in his garage collecting dust.

“This will be the first time in our 42 years together that we’ll be able to go home and stay home,” he said.

Jensen Bissel, director of the park’s Scientific Forestry Management Area, has been appointed interim director, and a nationwide search for a full-time replacement will likely continue through fall. Caverly does not expect to play a role in choosing his successor, he said.

“I have truly done my best,” Caverly wrote in a statement released Tuesday afternoon in which he applauded his staff. “I shall ride out of town knowing that the park is in good shape and in good hands, and for that I forever shall be grateful,” he wrote.

After a brief flirtation with becoming a policeman, Caverly has worked at the park his entire adult life, starting as a seasonal forest ranger in the park’s remote corners and then advancing to the top job in just a few years.

“Buzz takes this as a calling,” Jan Hoeckwater, a park naturalist, told The Bangor Daily News in 1994. “He always felt this was his home and the thing he was to do.”

Caverly has become known by his fans and critics alike for a single-minded dedication to the deeds of trust that park father Gov. Percival Baxter left behind outlining his plans for the park – so much so that jokes are often made about Caverly “channeling” the park’s founder.

But in all seriousness, colleagues said Tuesday that Caverly’s personal relationship with Baxter and his commitment to the governor’s wilderness vision will be Caverly’s legacy.

No one since Baxter himself has done more for the park, said Maine Attorney General Steve Rowe in a statement released Tuesday. Rowe serves as chairman of the Baxter State Park Authority, the park’s official governing body.

“He’s been crucial to keeping that vision alive for as long as anyone can remember … there was just no wavering,” Cathy Johnson, north woods project director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine and a frequent advocate for wilderness, said Tuesday.

“Buzz’s passion for the park and its wilderness values has been incredible – and it shows,” agreed Friends of Baxter President Charlie Jacobi, citing a long list of day-to-day accomplishments: the dam at Katahdin Stream Pond was removed, helicopter traffic to the top of Mount Katahdin was barred, buildings were razed, roads were shut down.

“All those little things, together, add up to an awful lot,” Jacobi said.

More recently, Caverly opposed opening up some park lands to hunting and motorized use and urged the state to consider banning floatplane traffic on remote Webster Lake. He has encouraged the protection of “barrier” lands around the park and has applauded preservationist Roxanne Quimby for her efforts near the park’s eastern boundary.

“I’ve watched him for a long time, and of course I’m pretty proud of him,” said Tim Caverly, Buzz’s kid brother at 10 years younger and a wilderness proponent himself as former manager of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway.

“He’s balanced things pretty darn effectively in an area where people want to go in so many different directions,” Tim Caverly said.

In his formal statement, Buzz Caverly wrote of his gratitude at having the kind of life that made him want to get up and go to work every day, despite the politics that were often a part of the job.

“I like the sound of the brooks, the breeze in my face, the scenery, the wildlife, the ripple of a maple leaf on a tree as I sat on a rock beside it,” Caverly told The Bangor Daily News in 1994, reminiscing about his early years as a ranger.

“The sounds … nature at peace. What else is there?”

Reporting done by former BDN journalist Mary Anne Legasse were contributed to this report.