Leavitt's Recognition in Maine and Later Years
Leavitt's stature as a writer on some of Maine's favorite topics, and his weekly television presence made him one of the state's celebrities – in the days when the words 'Maine' and 'celebrity' were oxymorons. Once, on a bird hunting drive in northern Maine with his friends Curt Gowdy and Brooks Robinson, Leavitt got lost. He stopped at a local home where he saw several men talking in the driveway. After inquiring after directions, Leavitt gestured at his car. Did the local Mainers know either of the two men in his automobile, Leavitt asked the group.
"No, we don't", answered one man, "but we sure know who you are. You're Bud Leavitt!"
Even Maine Senator Edmund Muskie tested the limits of political muscle when he brushed against Leavitt's following. It was arranged for Muskie to go ice-fishing with Bud Leavitt—or as Muskie adviser Clyde MacDonald Jr. put it, "possibly the greatest political event that could be arranged at that time." MacDonald lived next to columnist Leavitt, whom the Muskie aide inveigled to accompany Muskie on a fishing trip to an Ellsworth, Maine, lake. Muskie landed the prize-winning fish, headlined in the next day's Bangor newspaper. As Muskie recalled, his fishing trip with Leavitt made a deeper impression than most of his electoral efforts. "Muskie throughout the rest of his career would say, 'You know, I fought for Dickey-Lincoln, and I prevented them from closing Loring, but the thing that people talk about is that fish.'"
'Bud' Leavitt died on December 20, 1994, and his funeral mass was held in Bangor, not far from his home in Hampden, Maine, on December 26, 1994. His wife Barbara had predeceased him, dying five years prior in 1989. During his career, Leavitt wrote 13,104 columns for Maine newspapers, and a book called, simply, Twelve Months in Maine. Following his death, the State of Maine named the Bud Leavitt Wildlife Management Area, 6,500 acres (26 km2) of upland forest 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Bangor, in honor of the sportswriter, a longtime advocate for conservation and public lands. In 2000, six years after Leavitt's death, the Maine Press Association posthumously inducted Leavitt into its Hall of Fame.
'Bud' Leavitt is interred, alongside his wife Barbara, at Lakeview Cemetery in Hampden, Maine.
Read more about this topic: Ralph W. 'Bud' Leavitt Jr.
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