By Terry Karkos,Staff Writer

UPTON – “The fish must be biting in Heaven,” said Diane Williamson on Wednesday afternoon of the reason for her father’s death Monday.

She said her father, Richard “Buster” Williamson, 86, of Upton, was a legendary fisherman, woodsman, trapper and storyteller, who loved people as much as he loved solitude.

Retired Maine Warden Don Gray of Newry said Wednesday that Buster Williamson was a fisherman’s fisherman and a trapper who covered “quite a bit of ground.”

“He probably went fishing just about every day, and he knew the woods from Upton to Magalloway. He certainly loved the outdoors,” Gray said.

Buster Williamson’s wife, Ginny, said her husband of 60 years actually went fishing three to four times a day.

“Some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, but he was born with a fishing pole in his mouth,” she said Wednesday afternoon.

“He knew Louise Dickinson Rich, you know, the author of We Took to the Woods.’ They, (the Riches) didn’t have much food, so they would send him down to the Rapid River to catch trout,” Ginny Williamson said.

“I always said he could catch fish in a washtub when no one else could,” she added.

Her husband would rather fish than eat, she said.

“He would have a sandwich in one hand and be casting with the other and when he’d get a bite, the sandwich would go flying,” Ginny Williamson said.

Diane Williamson said she didn’t remember much about her father from when she was young, because “he worked ungodly hours.”

“He had a huge trap line, and was gone from morning to dark. In his younger years, he would travel 1,000 miles a month on snowshoes doing beaver trapping,” she said.

He lived a hard life, trapping, hunting, fishing, guiding and logging.

“One time he said he had a nail in his mouth while setting a beaver trap, and the ice cracked and he swallowed the nail,” she said.

During the last 10 to 15 years, Buster Williamson enjoyed tending his woodlots. Ginny Williamson called the trees in those woodlots her husband’s girlfriends because of his devotion to them.

Ginny Williamson said she met her husband in October 1945 in Portland when he worked at the shipyard after getting out of the service. They married in January 1946.

During World War II, her husband served as a cook on five oil tankers in the Merchant Marine.

“He got injured two to three times when the ships were blown up, but he survived that,” she said.

On Monday, he died of bone cancer, Diane Williamson said.

Next summer, the family hopes to have a memorial service for Buster Williamson and his son Dwight, who died on July 8.