Outdoors Writer and Columnist

Inducted in 2009. This article is based on information submitted at the time.

As Bill Burton turns 80, it would be just and fitting to honor him in the MDDC Hall of Fame for his half-century’s contribution to Maryland journalism. Whether you grant him that honor or not, however, he’s already been inducted into the hall of fame he values most: his readers’ hearts.

He won his way there by forging the link newspapers are crying for in these days of diminishing readership: He made himself, and his papers, an indispensable read. On the radio and television, he exercised the same appeal.

Generations of outdoors readers, listeners and viewers not only turned their pages and tuned their dials to Bill Burton; they felt connected by personal, two-way ties to him. They’ve trusted him to tell them the truth, in reporting the facts accurately and beyond: to putting them in the big picture. They’ve loved him as their storyteller, the friend who shares the magical gift of spellbinding with the trademark style of the salty, old sportsman, peppering his factual reports with yams, opinion and sound environmental sense.

To sports and outdoor fans, Bill Burton was as popular as Baltimore’s great football hero, Johnny Unitas. But Burton has practiced his craft longer, luring five decades of readers to the pleasures of the fields, woods and water.

For 50 years, Burton has covered Chesapeake Country, so thoroughly that he was nan1ed an Admiral of the Chesapeake by Gov. J. Millard Tawes. Even in old age, Burton ranks as Maryland’s premier outdoorsman and its dean of outdoors reporting, more prolific and dependable than writers half his age .

Thirty-seven and a half years, Burton will tell you proudly, he spent as outdoors editor for the Baltimore Evening Sun. “The best job in the world” was his own creation:

When l got discharged from the Navy Seabees, I was told I’d have to have a sedentary job all my life. I didn‘t believe them and wanted to build myself up. l went home to Harlington, Vt., to recuperate by hunting and fishing.

Then I took journalism at Goddard College on the G.I bill. My second semester I was made editor of the paper. My third semester, they opened a radio station in Montpelier, and as a disabled veteran, I got paid full-time as a journeyman. In a year I was a full fledged journalist. After a couple of years, I switched to newspapers.

I had a bunch of outdoors notes people had sent in that I put together in a column, Outdoor Trails and Tales, and I wrote that periodically. Outdoors writing was not big in the country at the time, but wherever I was, I wrote an outdoors column as an extra, until in 1956 The Sun hired me on full time as an outdoors reporter. I’ve been a full-time outdoors reporter for 50 years.

Retiring from The Sun at a vital 65, Burton joined fledgling Bay Weekly (then New Bay Times) in our fifth issue, bringing us a strength and sagacity envied by papers many times our age. That was over 13 years ago, and he’s been with us weekly ever since.

Clearly Burton didn’t retire from journalism. He’s since joined The Capital and Maryland Gazette as outdoors columnist and added a stack of newsletters and television gigs to his resume — which, at his age, doubles as the fact sheet for his obituary.

That’s the short of it. Burton also has been editor of Fishing and Hunting Journal; the annual Maryland Deer Hunting Guide; the annual Fishing in Maryland; plus the Hunting Report and the Angling Report. He’s also past president and one of three founding members of the Mason­ Dixon Outdoor Writers’ Association.

On the side, he’s taught the crafts that have been his life and livelihood: fishing and journalism, at Anne Arundel Community College and Chesapeake College.

When Bill Burton’s not out fishing or in writing, he’s a family man, devoted to his six children; 10 grandchildren, concluding with Grumpy, about to turn four; three sisters and one brother; two cats; and, of course, to Lois, his wife of 40 years.

“What keeps me going,” says Bill Burton, “is my work and Grumpy.”

by Sandra Olivetti Martin
Editor and Publisher Bay Weekly
2009