LUTHER SPRINGER’S LIFE LESSONS

Ask almost anyone in Ellsworth or Hancock about Luther Springer, and you’ll get a smile and a flood of memories about a man who became a local legend among sportsmen and among three generations of Mainers who rode the school buses he drove for 27 years regularly and until his late 70s as a relief driver.

Mr. Springer died July 22 at the age of 81 after a courageous fight with cancer. A number of fellow golfers skipped a tournament the next day to join a capacity gathering for his funeral at Union Congregational Church of Hancock.

As a young man, he became one of the best semi-pro baseball players in the area. He played first base and was a hard-hitting left-handed batter for Hancock in the old Tri-County Leagues and in the southern division of the Eastern Maine League. That was in an era when every town had its own team and afternoon baseball drew big crowds. A former team mate says Luther was always even tempered – except maybe for an occasional disagreement with an umpire. He sometimes had salty criticisms of pitching techniques of his favorite major-league team, the Red Sox.

Driving the school buses, to and from school and to baseball and basketball games, he talked sports and helped steer many youngsters and their children and grandchildren into athletics. Years later, when he sometimes chauffeured people and spotted a school bus, he would say, “There’s one of those big yellow fellers.”

In his 50s, he became an avid golfer, playing three or four rounds a week at the Bar Harbor Golf Course in Trenton. Charley Crowley, the owner of the course, says he was probably the fastest player who ever played the course. In a foursome, he would be getting set for his second shot while the last golfer was just teeing off. “We called him ‘Quick-draw McSpringer.'” Mr. Crowley says no one would dare arm wrestle with Luther. He was too strong.

But it is the former school bus riders who best remember Luther Springer, as a friend and mentor throughout the school years, as a seemingly permanent fixture of life in a small Maine community. And his influence through three generations provided not only community but also the continuity that makes life in rural Maine attractive.