‘That touch of elegance’ at MPBN dies at 72 Colbath a viewer advocate, lover of the arts

Mary Lou Colbath, a force in the state’s public broadcasting system and passionate supporter of the performing arts, died Monday in Bangor. She was 72.

The cause of her death at Eastern Maine Medical Center was complications from an unexpected and brief illness, said her son Sean.

Colbath, who lived in Orono, was best known to area TV viewers for her dedicated pleas during on-air fundraising drives for Maine Public Broadcasting Network.

With a short-cropped hairstyle and an emphatic smile, she spoke with a sophisticated accent in measured cadences that suggested upper-crust schooling and a love of language.

“She was refined and knew manners and proper English,” said Charles Beck, vice president of programming for MPBN. “But she really was an advocate for the average viewer and listener.”

Colbath worked in the development offices of MPBN from 1980 until 1996, long enough to make her a senior employee whose high standards and unfailing dedication won her admirers both on-air and off.

Her first boss, Barbara Beers, recognized Colbath’s patrician articulateness and friendly persuasiveness as tools that would serve the public organization well.

Later, the two would become “soul mates,” said Beers. They shared a taste for reading English murder mysteries and listening to symphonic music. In the 1980s, after surpassing fundraising goals in promotional breaks during the airing of the British series “Brideshead Revisited,” which both women loved, Colbath provided champagne and chocolate-dipped strawberries to celebrate with the staff.

“It was just that touch of elegance and class and joy that so illustrated the person Mary Lou was,” said Beers, vice president for development at the University of Maine. “She set the highest standard for all of us. Even though I was her boss on paper, I always was striving to meet her high standards. So many of us sought her approval because she personified excellence.”

After her years at MPBN, Colbath worked in the development office at Bangor Theological Seminary and had her own consulting firm for media writing projects, but remained an ardent spokeswoman for public broadcasting and the arts, expressing her opinions in letters to local newspapers. She was also a board member for the Bangor Symphony Orchestra and a regular attendee at performing arts events throughout the state.

Last summer, Colbath wrote a letter to this paper applauding the artistic direction of Julie Arnold Lisnet. ‘”Macbeth’ is not dead on the printed page but alive in full color and robust performance,” Colbath wrote of the show.

“Her love of theater was boundless,” said Lisnet, an actor, director and co-founder of Ten Bucks Theatre Company in Brewer. “I don’t remember a conversation that didn’t end with something about theater. The arts meant so much to her. For me, to garner her respect was huge. You could get a hundred compliments but hers is the one you wanted and remembered.”

Mary Lou Eshleman was born in Hagerstown, Md., and grew up in nearby Greencastle, Pa. Her mother was a nurse and her father was an electrician. They raised their daughter and one son, the late Richard Eshleman, in a liberal household. Both Mary Lou and Richard were the first in their extended families to attend college. Only Mary Lou graduated.

Formally establishing her love of performance, Colbath majored in theater at Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C. There she met and fell in love with one of her teachers, James Arnold Colbath, a playwright and director who would become her husband and Sean’s father.

Shortly after college, she taught drama in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and in the early 1960s, she and Arnold, a native of East Millinocket, were married in Elmira, N.Y., where he was pursuing an academic career. Sean was born in 1967, and the family moved in 1968 to Orono, where Arnold became a beloved professor of theater at UM. Arnold was also the love of her life. Friends say she never fully recovered from his death in 1986 at age 63.

Although Mary Lou Colbath set aside her own professional pursuits to raise Sean, she was active as her husband’s assistant, often working at the theater shop to sew costumes for his stage productions. She also earned a master’s degree in library science at UM in 1976, after which she began her career in marketing and development.

A professed anglophile, Colbath led professional study tours about children’s and young adult literature in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. She also led similar tours in New England. But her fascination with all things British was well known to her large community of friends, some of whom wondered if she had been raised in England.

Late last year, an incident with asthma, a lifelong ailment, had slowed some of Colbath’s activities including her regular attendance at the Church of Universal Fellowship in Orono, where she was a deacon and chair of the board of deacons, overseeing and developing programs for the congregation.

Colbath did attend Easter service on Sunday.

“Mary Lou brought an elegance of word and of action to our identity as a community of faith,” said the Rev. Lorna Stuart, minister at the church. “She always had a way with words to sensitively deal with people’s spiritual well-being. She knew how to respond instinctively to people’s joys, celebrations, sorrows and concerns.”

Stuart had enough respect for Colbath’s command of language that whenever the minister had an important letter to write, she would consult her parishioner for advice. She also appreciated Colbath’s hopeful outlooks. In the coldest months of winter, Stuart might receive an e-mail from Colbath conjuring images of warm beaches in Europe.

Colbath was so well known in the area, both from her professional work and community service, that she was often greeted by friends and acquaintances wherever she went. But she also liked quiet activities, such as gardening, reading or spending time with her cat, Duchess. One of her many projects was working on behalf of orphaned animals.

In the last year, Colbath had become closer to Jessie Bidol, a Bradford resident who was with Colbath when she died.

“You know how people say someone is a musician’s musician, or an artist’s artist? Mary Lou was a friend’s friend,” said Bidol.

The same spirit infused Colbath’s relationship with her only child, Sean, who lives with his wife, Donna, in Cambridge, Mass. The Colbaths supported their son when he majored in mathematics and computer science in college. He also minored in theater, largely because his parents had taught him the value of the performing arts, a lesson he continues to apply to his engineering work.

“We had a very close relationship,” said Sean, 40. “She always encouraged me to take risks and do what I wanted – to not hold back.”

Funeral plans were under way Monday and will be announced in the next few days in an additional obituary.