After more than four decades on Maine radio, Bud Sawyer is done.
The 73-year-old disc jockey signed off WLAM Friday morning, vowing to pitch his alarm clock into the ocean.
“I’ve been around for a long time,” said the affable baritone. “I broadcast no-school announcements to Abe Lincoln.”
He’s ready to retire from daily work, he said. But life won’t be too slow. He has projects to build for his grandchildren, repairs to make on his century-old Falmouth home and three books to write: a novel, poetry, and essays on his memories of radio.
“I’ve met a lot of people in my years,” he said. “The stories are all about them and this business.”
Sawyer grew up in towns along Maine’s Down East coast. His dad was a merchant mariner. And by the time he was 30, Bud had worked on lobster boats, dug clams and shoveled sardines.
However, radio was easier. He worked in several Maine stations before settling at WPOR in Portland. To country music listeners in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, his voice became forever linked with Johnny Cash, George Jones, Garth Brooks and Shania Twain.
His secret was talking to one person at a time.
“I never thought of a big audience,” he said. “To me, it was always one on one.”
During his career, he has broadcast aboard an aircraft carrier, a submarine and from the deck of the replica of the Mayflower.
He stayed at the Portland station until retiring in 1997. It didn’t stick, though. He missed the job, so he took a morning oldies show at WLAM in Lewiston. When the operation moved back to Portland in 2000, he went with it.
“I don’t want to sound cornball, but it is such a joy and a privilege to serve people,” he said.
He plans to continue his work recording advertisements for Maine businesses, a job that has made his face as identifiable as his voice.
“I’m an ad man,” he said.
He’s a radio man first, though. He enjoyed it to the last day.
“It seemed right for a veteran radio guy to leave on Veterans Day,” he said.
His last song: “Stars and Stripes Forever.”
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