Bill Mares, beloved Vermont polymath, dies at 83

Bill Mares wore many hats. He was an accomplished author and journalist. A state legislator and high school teacher. A beer maker and beekeeper. Mares, 83, died last week.

Journalism wasn’t his first choice for work. He wanted to be a diplomat. That didn’t work out. Then he worked as a banker; that didn’t stick. So he went to law school — another strike out.

“I had three failures in about a two-year period of time, and then by just dumb luck, I fell into journalism,” he told Vermont Public Television in 2008.

Mares started his career as a reporter and photographer in Chicago and eventually worked at newspapers in five states, including at the Chicago Sun-Times and the Burlington Free Press. 

He also wrote or co-authored 20 books with topics that ranged from the training of U.S. Marines to beekeeping to satires about Vermont. Mares told Vermont Public Television that his various hobbies offered him plenty of creative fodder.

“The book sort of grows out of the hobby,” he said. “And how am I going to tell my kids, ‘Well, I can't come to your game because I'm in the basement making beer.’ Well, how do I turn that into something that's responsible? Well, I'm going to write a book about making beer.”

Mares was born in St. Louis, raised in Texas and came to Vermont in 1971. He and his wife settled in St. Johnsbury before moving to Burlington.

In 1985, he was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives, where he served three terms. One of his lasting legislative accomplishments: He introduced the bill that allowed the creation of brewpubs in Vermont. But Mares said he wasn’t cut out to be a lawmaker.

“I needed to have a thicker skin to do the log rolling and bargaining that's necessary in that environment,” he told Vermont Public Television.

After legislating, Mares tried his hand at another profession — teaching. He spent two decades teaching history and American foreign policy at Champlain Valley Union High School.

“I mean, it's like doing legal drugs, getting kids to realize that they got these brains and they can be using them,” he said.

But teaching, writing and legislating wasn’t enough for Mares. He taught evening classes for potential beekeepers and ran 30 marathons.

He served on the boards of nonprofits including VTDigger, the Fairbanks Museum and the Vermont Council on World Affairs. And for more than a decade, he recorded commentaries that aired on Vermont Public.

“I understand he didn't care for the term renaissance man, but he sure covered a lot of territory,” said Betty Smith, a producer and announcer at Vermont Public, who worked with Mares to edit and produce his commentaries.

“Bill was really fun to work with … he had a real dry wit,” Smith said. “He usually came at things with a really interesting perspective, not totally alien to everybody else's, but usually with a little twist that made it interesting or fun or piqued your curiosity.”

Mare’s commentaries covered global and national news, local politics and, of course, beekeeping. Sometimes he combined them all.

“Nationalism is rampant. Other countries threaten to break apart entirely, and dictatorship is always in vogue. So it is with the bees, since they are biologically imperiled by parasites, climate change and pesticides,” he said in a 2018 commentary titled "Bee Democracy.”

Mares died on July 29 after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He opted to use a state law that allows terminally-ill patients to end their own life.

Mares, speaking to VTDigger’s David Goodman a week before his death, said he was glad to “have the chance to drive the bus of my own disappearance."

“I've enjoyed life, and I'm ready to go, and and I'm just happy to go and without any pain,” he told Goodman.

Mares is survived by his wife of 53 years, Christine Hadsel, his two sons, and three grandkids.

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