BRATTLEBORO — Ken Campbell attended thousands of games and wrote countless stories about athletes at the youth, high school, college and professional levels, from Burlington to Boston and all points in-between, in his 37 years as sports editor of the Brattleboro Reformer.
But his greatest accomplishment, according to his children, was the warm and supportive family environment he and wife Hazel created, safe at home.
“He didn’t miss a game,” says Peter Campbell, the oldest of the couple’s four children, who was a three-sport star at Brattleboro Union High School in the 1970s. “I played baseball in college (North Adams State), and he’d drive down to Florida every spring training. My mother also never missed a game, and then my son played Division 1 football, and they used to go to all of his games. They were very, very involved. You know, the guy was the best. He never raised his voice to us as kids growing up and always had positive things to say.”
Those people skills also complemented Campbell’s career in journalism. He set a standard of excellence in writing, reporting and personal relationships during his career reporting on Brattleboro area athletics from the early 1950s through the 1980s. Ken was a humble man, always deflecting attention from himself and toward the athletes, coaches and teams he covered.
For all of those reasons, Campbell, who died in 2003, will have the unusual honor of being inducted into the BUHS Athletic Hall of Fame on Nov. 1 — not as an athlete, but for his excellence in single-handedly covering generation upon generation of Windham County athletes for nearly four decades. He was “the voice” of Southern Vermont high school and youth league athletics, covering everything from Small Fry and Little League baseball to the exploits of local athletes on the high school, collegiate and, occasionally, at the professional level.
“Ken was very well-liked by the sports community in the Brattleboro area throughout his career, as he was not just the sports editor of the Reformer, but a life-long member of the community, attending schools there and raising his family there,” says Gary Harrington of Swanzey, N.H., who began his career as a sports reporter under Campbell’s wing and eventually succeeded him as sports editor at the Reformer. “I don’t recall ever meeting one person during my tenure at the Reformer that did not like Ken Campbell or consider him a friend. That is very difficult to do in the newspaper business, where your every written word is scrutinized by the public. But that is a testament to Ken’s ability to report in a fair and balanced manner and to always be looking for the positives even in a team’s worst defeat.”
Campbell witnessed and reported on the exploits of professional talents like BUHS quarterback Joe Shield, who later played in the NFL for the Green Bay Packers. He followed Carlton “Pudge” Fisk through Fisk’s days with the Bellows Falls Post 37 baseball team to his famous 12th inning home run in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series at Fenway Park. He covered one of the finest high school teams ever in Vermont history, the 1965 Vermont State Division I undefeated champion Brattleboro Colonels.
Campbell also had a long, rewarding friendship with fellow Brattleborian Ernie Johnson, a longtime major-league pitcher and broadcaster for the Boston/Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves, and their careers were intertwined right from the start. One of Campbell’s first reports for the Reformer was about a complete-game victory that Johnson pitched against the New York Giants in September, 1952.
His interests led him to a special relationship with Boston area sports teams. He took what is considered the finest photo ever taken of Ted Williams, one that was later displayed at the Splendid Splinter’s museum in St. Petersburg, Fla. Campbell’s daughter, Kathy Campbell Lovelace, recounted a story about how that photo was taken.
“Because much of Dad’s career was pre-computer, he spent a fair amount of time in the locker rooms in Boston with the Bruins, Celtics and Red Sox,” Kathy says. “Ted Williams was known to hate the press. One day Dad witnessed a Boston reporter yell at Williams at Fenway, ‘Get over here for a photo!’ Williams replied, ‘Go to hell!’
“Dad then humbly engaged Ted, stating he was from the Brattleboro Reformer, and would he please give a photo for the Jimmy Fund (for cancer research)? That photo of Ted typified Dad’s emotional intelligence and astute people skills which made him excel as a reporter.”
“I think the one thing that put Ken ahead of the curve … was the way he treated girls sports,” Harrington wrote when Campbell was inducted into the Vermont Principals Association (VPA) Hall of Fame several years ago. “Ken, I am certain, was one of the first sportswriters in the state, if not all of New England, to give girls sports – still in their infancy in the 1970s and early ‘80s – the same level of coverage that boys sports always enjoyed. This was likely not a favorable position in the early days, but thanks to people like Ken, girls sports have made significant gains at the local level in achieving equal or near-equal coverage from the state’s newspapers. Ken led this movement from his keyboard.
“Ken was a very professional reporter,” Harrington wrote, “by which I mean that he kept his personal biases out of his reporting, which is obviously not something that is prevalent in the industry today. Ken covered a game from the viewpoint of a fan, and gave his readers a clear and concise report of exactly what happened. However, that being said, he also had very strong and sometimes not always popular opinions, but he saved those for his Saturday column called ‘Speaking of Sports,’ which was a staple in the Reformer for decades. I remember getting the Saturday Reformer as a teenager and immediately turning to the sports page to read his column before I even turned to the comics!”
Kevin O’Connor, now a writer for the Vermont news website VTDigger.org, remembers Campbell for his versatility as a reporter. In September, 1980, when O’Connor was a Reformer intern, the staff was busy with election results when the C&S Wholesale Grocers warehouse under construction in town collapsed, killing one and injuring four others.
“With most of the staff consumed with election coverage, Campbell went to the local hospital to help report on the accident,” O’Connor recalls. “A year later, United Press International recognized his efforts by presenting the Reformer with its annual New England ‘spot news’ award for excellence under deadline pressure.”
In the book “Green Mountain Boys of Summer,” pitcher Mark Brown, who had major-league stints as a reliever with the Baltimore Orioles and Minnesota Twins, remembers a (semi-pro) Northern League game involving both Ken and Pete Campbell at then-Stolte Field in Brattleboro in 1978.
Brown, pitching for Saxtons River, and Bennington’s Dave Klenda matched zeroes for eight innings before Bennington’s Pete Campbell broke up Brown’s no-hitter with a towering home run to win the game.
The legend of that game grew over time, according to the book. “It was such a big night for baseball,” Brown recalled. “(The fans) saw that it was really good baseball, not some beer league, with good pitching, good hitting and good fielding. And the game was such a thriller.” The Reformer’s Campbell wrote that it was a “dramatic end to a well-played contest.” Off the record, though, Campbell took on a more excitable tone, according to Saxtons River coach Dave Moore. “He told me it was the best game he’d ever seen,” Moore said, according to the book. Of course Campbell would say that — it was his own son who hit the home run!
Campbell was also a longtime Little League baseball coach, instilling good sportsmanship in his young players, including one team that went to the Eastern Regional championship in East Chester, N.Y.
“Mr. Campbell was my Little League All-Star coach,” says David McGinn, a baseball and football star at BUHS and member of the school’s athletic hall of fame. “I will always remember him as having the positive perspective on youth in sport. He could, and did, have the ability to find the positive in any event, even when it might be hard to do.”
Campbell was also instrumental in bringing the original lights to Stolte (now Tenney) Field, which enabled more game time for field hockey, soccer and baseball. “Dad did much of the fund raising for the lights,” says Kathy Lovelace. “He even borrowed his friend’s truck to travel to Boston along with (her sister) Kim and I to transport the lights back to Brattleboro.”
Kathy said that many people admired Campbell for his ability to be so efficient with statistics, photography and reporting. But she remembers him best for his willingness to spend time with his family and involve his children in his work. “Dad would go to his office dark room on Sunday mornings to develop film from the games the day before,” she said. “Still being an engaging father, Dad would take Kim and I along as preschoolers to play office in the newsroom while he worked.
“On Sunday nights, Dad would sit at our dining room table with his Smith Corona typing out stories for the paper the next day. And we kids would sit at the same table finishing our homework.
“Dad always said he had the best job in town because he got to spend time with his children,” Kathy said. “He was a very talented and admirable man, and a great father.”
