 Hello and welcome to me on five. This will be my last show before the summer hiatus and actually have my summer shirt on, my Boston Red Sox shirt to celebrate summer in Maine. I think we're actually gonna have like a 65 to 70 degree day here in Maine. This show is about Maine and its people. And the guest I have on today is one of Maine's most important people in my humble opinion. Bill Nimitz, welcome aboard. Thank you. It's a sad occasion you're coming on that you're retiring. Here's folks, here's a picture of, this is the article of paper. Bill looking smart as usual, Bill. And you did this Maine voice and say, how did that go? That went great. Yeah, it was wonderful. I had a wonderful chat with Catherine Lee, our online editor. And yeah, we went on for a while, 90 minutes. Oh, 90 minutes? Well, you know, you wind me up. This is gonna be short, Bill, because I only got this little short page of notes. You're gonna have five minutes. Bill, I'm very fortunate, because I know that you had a number of these scheduled. I mean, everybody wants to get a piece of the action when the guy is going out, right? That's right, that's right. Well, I'm happy to do it, because it's been a long, long run and a lot of fun and made a lot of great friends, you and others along the way. So what better time to talk about it than now? You, this is your fourth appearance on my show, I'm pretty sure. Which means you've beat F. Lee Bailey by one. Wow. I was our most frequent guest with three, I think. And so you've now talked, F. Lee Bailey, 45 years for you. That's right, yeah. Yeah, I started at the Morning Sentinel up in Waterville, 1977, walked in off the street. I didn't even, I just come to Maine with my then girlfriend and we were just looking for jobs. I didn't even know where the newspapers were. We went by Waterville on 995. I said, yeah, it looks big enough. There must be a newspaper here. So I drove in, this is after having been to Lewiston and Bangor, walked into their newsroom and the state editor, her name was, at the time her name was Rebecca Becky Littleton. She's now Becky Corbett, Pulitzer Prize winner for the New York Times. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so she went for long and far, yeah. But you get stuck here. Yeah, right, right. So she sits down with me and she was interviewing people for a reporting job and thought I was just one of them that had made an appointment. So halfway through it, she says, so when did you, you know, when did you retalk? And I said, well, we haven't. I just walked in off the street. Short, long story short, I didn't get that job. Oh, you didn't get that job, okay. Guy named Neil Genslinger got that job. He's at the New York Times now too. And I went back, I was in Rockland living at the time. So I was freelancing and then a few months later they had another opening and called me and boom, off I went. You know, Bill, folks, we've never been to dinner. We've never gone fishing together. We meet at the studio and become friends. But that is the first thing, the second thing that you said, I'm gonna read something on the paper that also connects us, but that Rockland thing is my first job out of Bowdoin. I couldn't get a job in radio announcing because of my main accent. And I was sitting in my tape everywhere, Portland, whatever, Westbrook, nobody wanted me except Rockland, because one of my best friends is father owned WTVO and WIKAD. And when he heard my accent, he goes, that's fine for Rockland, go ahead. So I was on radio now, so for Rockland. You know what I was doing in Rockland? I was doing two things. I was first, the guy lived in the same building we did, we had a TV repair business. He needed a helper to put up roof antennas. TV antennas, so I could actually drive through Rockland right now, and to this day, I could say, I put that antenna up on that roof. And the other job I had before I got the newspaper job was with a cleaning company, it's easy to get work. And ironically, there I am with my journalism degree, fresh out of the University of Massachusetts, and I'm cleaning the office as a down east magazine. I'm emptying their ashtrays. Bill, I have to tell you that I love the humility of life, and I just graduated from Bowdoin. Most of my friends were going off to work for insurance companies and banks, but I wanted to be in radio. And their pay was like, I don't know, two or three hundred bucks a week. I was getting $67, $70 a week. It was costing me more for lunch than I was making. And I go, Jesus, it's gotta be, some way I can make more money doing this, or not Rockland made, my friend. So about 27 years with the Portland papers, right? I actually no longer, I came down to Portland in 83. 83? So whatever that is, it's almost 40, yeah. Because when I first came down to Portland in 83, I was a reporter for the Evening Express, remember the Evening Express? Yeah, I should do. And then became city editor for the Press Herald. And then I became sports, I ran the sports department for five years. You had that in the article, right, yeah. And then finally in 95, I was approached by our executive editor, as I said in the farewell column, as I kind of rose up the editorial ladder, everybody thinks, I want to be the executive editor, I want to run this place, you know? But the more I did that, the more it was gnawing at me that I really missed the writing. And I wasn't real wild about all the administrative stuff of running a sports at about 20, 25 people. It wasn't really what got me into the business in the first place. So I had always said, remember on the performance evaluations, when they say, the last question, would you see yourself five years, most ridiculous question in the world, what are you gonna be doing five years from now, or 10 years from now? And so I always used to say at the bottom of that, I'd say, well, someday I'd really like to get back to writing. And so Lou Eurenick, the executive editor, called me down, because remember Bill Caldwell, hit me, he'd retired. And he had been retired for a couple of years. And everybody was reading Bill. And we were having a heck of a time filling that slot. And so Lou said to me, pointed to that on my evaluation, said, are you serious about that? And I said, I don't know. At the end of the show, oh yeah. You know, it caught me by surprise. It was a Friday, so I said, let me think about it. I went home for the weekend. And that's when my wife uttered those famous words on Sunday night, because I was still Sunday night. I didn't know. And she said, if you don't do this, you will never forgive yourself. How many years married to Andrew? We got married in, oh, you're going to get me, in trouble now, 94. So what is that, 28 this December? So Bill, we got Rockland connection. We got the fact that you were married in 94. I was married to my wife, Marilyn, in 94. There we go. And now this connection. Ladies and gentlemen, this is my favorite quote from Bill Nemitz. It said, my problem, I love to talk. I start little conversations, and that's what it says. People often ask me how I first knew I wanted to be a journalist. I've distilled it down to my report cards. When I was a kid going to parochial school outside Boston, on the back there was one metric that trapped me up every time. It said simply self-control. Bill, I swear to God, when I was going to school, just yards up the street, I used to get the same exact thing, self-control. But Bill, I got a C. What would you get? It would be like a number, check, I need help. Oh, OK. They gave us letter grades for these things. Oh, no. I never got above a C. No, this was like, well, I had it checked like you need help in this. But Bill, because I was eight years old, I never knew what self-control was. Well, you know, I went to a Catholic school, which is where I went. Self-control means all kinds of things, you know? You go in the bathroom. Right, right, right. But for us, it was, you know, you behaved, you know? And I wasn't a bad kid. I mean, I didn't, I mean, I had my moments. Me neither. But we used to get self-control when I. And I just used to love to talk. Say, you need to talk too much. You worry me to death. Exactly. So yeah, I got that reputation as I went up through those grades that this is the one that you got to, if they had duct tape, they would have put it over my mouse. Well, Bill, at senior superlatives in the high school yearbook, I got best dressed, best dancer, and always talking. Not talking a lot, always talking. So unless it's followed, so were you born in January too? No, I was born July. Yeah. Okay, I thought maybe you were. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's always. When I read that, I thought to myself, because I've told people, I said, yeah. I said, I used to get this thing, but how does an eight-year-old or a nine-year-old know me? My parents never told me when it was. Well, you know, it was also just always wanting to, it wasn't just the talking. It was always wanting to know what was going on. No, see, think, be there. I always wanted to be there or something was happening. Me too. You know what I mean? If I saw the fire trucks go by, I'd chase them on my bike, you know. I want to see what's going on. I remember, I remember. A nosy guy from the very beginning. We had a thunderstorm one day passed through our neighborhood. This is in Needham, Massachusetts. Thunderstorm comes through, bolt of lightning like you have never heard before. In fact, it hit a tree in our backyard and then bounced off the tree, went across the neighborhood to the Bradford's house, into their house and blew up their kitchen stove. What? Yeah, I mean, this was, so the tree, huge oak tree comes down, the house is on fire, and I've died and gone to heaven. I mean, are you kidding me? The fire department comes. I hope there's people out watching. And you know what the best part was? There was a, we had Needham, little town in Needham had two newspapers at that time. The Needham Chronicle and Needham Times. And there was a guy that took photos for the Needham Times, I believe it was. His name was Robert Shalu, C-H-A-L-U-E. And so after each photo, the credit line would just say Shalu Photo. So fire department comes, everything. And then of course, the Needham Times comes and this guy comes, gets out of his car with the big old camera, you know, walking into my backyard. And all of a sudden I realized, that's Shalu. Shalu is in my backyard, you know? And I thought this is the most special day of my life. And yeah, that was my first, I guess you could say that was my first interaction with the media. Isn't that something? And I'll never forget, he was like a God. And I didn't even know his first name. All I knew was that he was Shalu. So you liked me, and I remember, I was writing murder mysteries at Bowdoin College as a freshman because I wanted to see my name in print. And my first book was a law book and then the book about me and my daughter. But I used to love to just see my name in print. And I swear that when I was back at Bowdoin, I would send press releases back about myself. I just wanted to, they would print them. My first main byline, I'll never forget it. Remember I mentioned the cleaning company? So we take a break, there's this, I don't know if it's still there, the Dunkin Donuts up at the end of Main Street of Rockland. And that's where we would take our 10 o'clock break. Well, I had been working during the day trying to get these freelance stories published with the Rockland Courier Gazette at the time. And I had done a story, the first one, on a guy named Earl Kelly, who was a game warden up in that area, Knox County, who was retiring. So why not profile the guy? So I did this story, that day, and I took a photo of him. I went in, John Hammer was the editor of the Rockland Courier Gazette, dropped off to the film, dropped off the copy. This was like 11 o'clock, 10 o'clock in the morning. That night, I met Dunkin Donuts with my cleaning crew, we're having a break, guy across the U-shaped counter, the Courier Gazette had just come out, it was a Thursday, pops open his paper looking inside, and I look, and on page one, top of page one, there's my story with my byline. And I thought, that's it, that's it. It was like, you know, the heavens opened, I said. You know, Bill, that is the story that most rock stars tell Bobby Rydell himself, when he was driving down the road in his car, and Presley, and then all of a sudden, you turn the radio, hey, you gotta hear this song. I definitely wanted to get the politics today. Sure. And one of the, I have questions, one of your favorite, there's some favorite that, who would you say your favorite, one of your favorite politicians? Oh, I would have to say George Mitchell. Same here, same here exactly. Oh my God. I just think he's at a stature and a level that I'm so good at. So we agree on that, I've said that, when I first met him at Bowden, I went back to my college fraternity, I said, I just met the smartest politician, I said, this guy's gonna be governor someday. He's one of the first people I ever interviewed, too. Well, first politicians, because he had just become, he had just, Joe Brennan had just appointed him to the Senate after Ed Muskie became Secretary of State, and I was a reporter at the Sentinel, and George was doing a goodwill tour, stopping in everywhere, and they said, we want an interview with Senator Mitchell, and I was as green as you could be, and I'll never forget asking him a stupid question. I said, I understand you're very concerned about hazardous waste, and I made reference to this being an issue that has recently come to the surface, not meaning to pun, and I was embarrassed as heck, and he laughs, pulls out a piece of paper, says, I have to write that out, and he puts it back, and I mean, he was just the most, he had a way of putting you at ease, but beyond that, all of his accomplishments, I went to Ireland for the Good Friday Peace Accord, and talked with him extensively during that, and have several times, many times over the years, had the opportunity to meet with him again, and I'm telling you, he's in a class by himself. Well, thank you for that. We agree on many things. George did a video presentation for my legend, and it was Terry Garney, and it was the funniest thing, Joe, because they said, excuse me, Senator Mitchell, these two guys having a dinner, they say they know you, and he goes, I don't recognize those guys. He said, this guy looks like you might sell you his car. I mean, it was just deadpan the whole time, and then he goes, and by the way, typical George, and you know, when he did interviews later on, he would simply say to them, give me all the questions you intend to ask me, not one at a time, and they'd go, okay, and he'd give a speech to answer all those questions. Well, I always found, he was actually a very difficult interview, you know why, because everything that came out of his mouth was a quote. Yeah, that's true, that's right. Usually, you know, 10% of what someone says is quotable, but I couldn't keep up with them. Thank God for tape recorders, because it's like you're trying to get a quote down, and he says something even better right on top of it. I'll never forget that I was on a cruise ship, and he was being questioned by the Congressional Committee on steroids. He'd just come up with a report where he named names and so on and so forth, and a certain congresswoman was laying into him in her fashion, and I'll never forget the way he said, oh, see, that is the question, she said, excuse me, he said, you asked me a question, and it is my duty, my obligation to answer the question, so let me do this, and he'd be again and go like this, wham, wham, giving her facts and figures. By the way, Bill, my only federal trial was against George Mitchell in federal court, it was a perjury case, he brought a perjury case against my client, and we tried the case together, a two-day trial, and I lost it, and the jury was out of her shot 30 times, thank God that my client didn't get much of a sense, but afterwards he introduced me to the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, he goes, Mr. President, one of the finest trial lawyers in the state of Maine, I turned to my wife, I said, thank God I didn't beat him in there. Yeah, that's right, that's right. So we agree on the favorites, one of the people that you spent a lot of time talking about, he's running again, and we can talk about his chances, but you closed, you said, wait this, you were talking about LePage, you said, here's looking at your big guy, because you used to refer to him in that, and when you used to use that comment, it was often in a sort of, not a derogatory tone, but this, when I read this, I read, you wrote that from kindness, didn't you? Yeah, well, it's the end of the road, and as I was still writing into this spring, and he was obviously running again, I thought, even if I hadn't decided to return, it would have been different this time, only because it gets very repetitive. Yes. I had my fun with him at times, he had his fun, or maybe I guess, with me. I don't know if he did, but you know, there's kind of an echo chamber thing to it right now. I think, as he did in 2014, the second time he ran, he's trying to present himself as new and improved, and he tried to do that once before, and if I recall, I don't know if he made it all the way to the end of the campaign before slipping back into his old ways, but my prediction is right now, especially him running against Janet Mills, that she's going to get under his skin, and it's going to be a wild race. Bill, I'm going to get on with just a couple of the issues, but I just thought that was a nice thing for you to say, but by the way, my partner, Ken Auschula, also leaning toward the left and being the liberal voice on that set, when he interviewed him, it was very similar, and I'll never speak to Ken Auschula again, and then of course, as you get to know each other. So, favorite politician, we agree upon Mitchell without any question. Any favorite celebrities that you've come across that you've had contact with? Celebrities. Like, you know, running to Neil Diamond. Well, I remember meeting Dan Akroyd at the Super Bowl in New Orleans once, on Bourbon Street. Oh, no kidding. I was down, early on in my column writing career, I decided that the way to, there was a, the key was to find the big stories, whether it was 9-11 or Afghanistan, Iraq, or when the Patriots went with Drew Bledsoe when they went in the 90s with the Super Bowl. And so, I went down there with a photographer, and of course, you know, you had to hit Bourbon Street, and we're walking down Bourbon Street, and all of a sudden there's Dan Akroyd, three sheets to the wind too, yeah. So, trying to get a usable quote on him, it wasn't happening. But I, you know, so every once in a while, you have these moments where you just kind of, you know, rub elbows with people, but hey, you know, one thing about, whether they're politicians, celebrities, whatever, they, I've always found when you meet these people, you realize that they're just people. Well, you know, I do agree with that, but I also say to people, yes, they put their legs, the pants on one leg at a time, and they're all just people, but some of their accomplishments are so incredible. Oh yeah, oh yeah. For example, George Mitchell, they, you know, and some of the celebrities I've met, including my friend, Bobby Wright, Del Brenda Lee, you know, people that had, you know, reached so-called a pinnacle over their careers. You're right, when you finally sit down with them, you realize they got the same exact concern. Yeah, they're people. And it's all in how intimidated or not you choose to be. Well, I always loved meeting so-called celebrities, and when I was in high school, they all come in the blue auditorium, the Beach Boys, the Four Seasons. I used to make it my business to stand there and just shake hands with them, because I do believe greatness rubs off. I do. I think that if you touch somebody or you meet somebody, that whatever greatness that you thought they had. Well, you know, there are a couple of locals that I love, dearly, Dave Aster. Oh, God, me too. Oh, geez. And Bud Sawyer was one of my favorite people. So, I mean, they became friends. Well, Bill, as a young boy, I was on the Dave Aster show. I'm sure. Who wasn't? Well, then when I was an account executive at Channel Six Television, I sold the Dave Aster show. Oh, there you go. And I would tell Dave, I'd say Dave, my God, I'm ready. You gotta stop doing the so-and-so song. Summertime, summertime, whatever. And he would laugh. And I inducted Dave Aster into the Portland Players Hall of Fame. I founded that Hall of Fame and he was one of my first inductees because he was a big supporter of theater. One of the, I just, we only had a half hour and I just wanted to touch this issue. As you know, I wrote a book about my daughter with my daughter called Full Circle about her being transgender and all the troubles and the good times, the bad times, everything. Bill, I was somewhat amazed that the Republican party with all the issues going around with Ukraine and the economy and COVID, that they would choose to have a front page article that says we are now gonna go quote after this education about gays and the critical race theory and all that sort of stuff like they have done in Florida. What are they trying to accomplish? I'm glad you mentioned Florida because I wouldn't want anybody to think that the Maine's Republican party was engaging in any original thinking. Yes, okay, well, that's my point. Where did this come up with? It's just, it's all about that base and it's all about, I mean, it's called the MAGA base, the Trump base, whatever you want to call it. It's about it first attracting and then holding on to that segment of voters. And the problem is, like anyone, especially like children, these folks, they don't have the longest attention spans. So as you go down that road toward, this is wrong, we have to prohibit that. We should make that illegal. The party has to keep upping its game to keep these people engaged. Even Trump now is losing his luster with a lot. He's becoming old hat with some of these people. So I think the problem is, they just keep digging themselves in deeper and deeper on these so-called social-moral issues and the only way to keep the base inflamed is to keep raising the stakes. So now- Going backwards in time. Yeah, right. I mean, we thought gay marriage was settled. Right, no. Apparently not. Apparently not. And now with Roe v. Wade about to be overturned, they're saying- We can do this. That's a whole slope, we can do that. Folks, we discussed the same-sex marriage on this show when there was law and the line. John Baldacci was the first governor to promote it. And I did marriage ceremonies like that. What concerns me, Bill, is that there are obviously people in the Republican party, including prominent people. Doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs, judges, whatever, who are gay, transgender, whatever, they are in that party. What do they- Well, they're in the party, but it depends on how you define in the party. I mean, there are a lot of people who are still registered as Republicans. And by these people, I mean, these are the traditional Republicans. This is the Olympia Snow, Sherry Huber, the long time, yeah, right. And I mean, nominally, they're Republicans, but actively they're not. So Bill Cohen would not go along with that. No, no. And so you don't see them engaged in party activities the way they used to be. Because, and that has created a void over the, I'd say going back really to the Tea Party about 12 years ago. That void has been filled by people who are, very narrow-minded, very self-interested, and see themselves as soldiers in this cultural war. Soldiers, that's totally on point. Soldiers in the cultural war. And it's not where the rest of the country's headed. Well, I can say this to you. I have a very dear friend, and his son is gay, and he is a very prominent kind of Republican, name will never be mentioned. And I wrote to him and a few others and said, what's gonna happen with this? And he wrote back and said, well, I've been supporting certain Republican legislators over the years. And I'm actually gonna ask them what position you take on this gay issue or whatever, attacking the gays and the trends like this. And if in fact you're part of that platform, you will no longer get my support, you'll no longer get my contribution. So I'm wondering what kind of a backlash is gonna be for them. Well, there could be on this because I think that's, a lot of people thought we had moved on. We moved on. And there are other things that need to be fought, battles that need to be fought, but that's just not one of them. Maybe there will be, but the other thing is their platform has been out there for some time now. Remember the Austrian economics, you know, that stuff. So I don't think people pay a lot of attention to platforms. I think it's a way of whipping up that base. They were up in Augusta, they all have their moment. But if your friend asks those candidates that question or those questions, my guess is they're gonna waffle their way right around them. They're not gonna be thumping their chests over this stuff on the campaign trail. They do it at their conventions, but not when they're knocking on doors. I have to tell you something, Bill. I knew that you would make me feel better on this issue. And I'm serious, I needed some help with it because at first I was so angry, I was gonna do a complete show on it and I was gonna come on and I was gonna bring Harold Pacers. And you just settled my mind basically saying, Derry, not time to panic yet. Not time to panic. No, I mean, they have their group but I don't see it expanding, I really don't. Well, one of the other things that I wanted to talk to you about was we won't even have 30 seconds to talk about it, but we do know that Roe versus Wade is about to be overturned, which would be a huge constitutional, they're gonna be discussing that and calling law classes. And we also know that LePage will run on that campaign and Janet will run on the other campaign and it's gonna be happening everywhere, isn't it? Even to like, you know, like the local elections, Roe versus Wade is gonna be, it's gonna- Well, while I might add, while Susan Collins skates. Yeah. You know, I'm sorry. I did wanna mention that because I was gonna ask you. I'm glad you brought it up because I didn't think I was gonna have enough time. We see a couple of my friends from college wrote a thing and I said, guess what? It's water off a duck's back. She's not running again. She has a tremendous power base. And I think that what she is saying, isn't she saying essentially she got faked out of a jock or that they- Well, I think she wants us to believe that, yes, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch both told her that they wouldn't mess with precedent and she believed them. Okay. And poor Senator Collins, they lied. I'm not buying it. She's smarter than that. She knew exactly what she was up against with these guys. Right, so they skirted around the issue. Don't worry about it. They provided her cover. And now, and I remember when she voted for Kavanaugh, I remember thinking, this is going to come back and bite her. We all know this is gonna come back and bite her. We didn't realize to this extent. Yeah, well, I thought, I always thought he's gonna, yeah, the reason they're putting these guys on the court is because of Roe v. Wade. That's the reason they're there. So for her to now say, oh, God, that's not what they told me. This is entirely inconsistent. Give me a break. Okay, well, you know, folks, with that, I close, we close with more cogent, eloquent rhetoric from truly one of the great columnists of Maine History, Bill Nemitz. Bill, thank you so much. Thank you, Derry. It's been a pleasure. As always. Yeah, a lot of fun.