Monday, January 1, 2007
Bangor Daily News

Longtime BDN editor dies

A longtime editor at the Bangor Daily News died suddenly Friday, four days after working Christmas Day for the company that employed him for 22 years. Carroll Dana Astbury of Hampden was 58 years old.

Astbury grew up in the Blue Hill area and later lived in Orrington. He worked for the paper in numerous capacities during his career, including in the promotions department and as business writer, business editor, assignment editor and news editor.

His most recent position was as an assignment editor overseeing the business page and the Hancock County bureau in Ellsworth.

A funeral service for Astbury will be held at 1 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 2, at the Brookings-Smith funeral home on South Main Street in Brewer.

Julie Murchison Harris, managing editor at the Bangor Daily News, knew Astbury well, having worked closely with him for many years.

"Carroll loved his job because he loved people, and journalism gave him a chance to tell their stories, to share a bit of something he had discovered," Harris said. "He had a creative mind that helped him stay positive and look for the fun life offered."

Jane Madigan, senior vice president for marketing and human resources for Merrill Bank, said Sunday that she had always enjoyed her interactions with Astbury.

"We would reconnect after not talking for several months, and it was always a wonderful conversation," she said. "He was incredibly bright and thoughtful and a consummate professional. Banking was just one of the things he wrote about and was knowledgeable about. I’ll really miss him."

Mark Woodward, executive editor of the paper, said that Astbury’s outgoing personality allowed him to get to know quickly the people he was writing about.

His background in economic statistics strengthened his natural ability to be analytical and to get straight facts when learning about an issue, he added.

"He was gregarious by nature," Woodward said. "He had an amazing ability to connect with people and was genuinely interested in them. All of that was very important to him as a reporter."

George MacLeod, a Bucksport restaurateur and real estate agent, recalled Sunday that he always felt comfortable talking to Astbury, whether it was about their personal lives or about wider issues.

"He was a real likable kind of person," MacLeod said. "He was very sincere and had no agendas."

Astbury graduated from George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill in 1966 as valedictorian of his class. He graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick in 1970 with a degree in economics and then briefly worked as a substitute teacher back at GSA.

He was taking accounting courses at Northeastern University in Boston when he was drafted for military service in 1971.

As a result, Astbury joined the Navy and went with his new wife, Leslie Astbury, to Europe where he was stationed as a communications specialist in what was then West Germany.

They lived first in Bremerhaven and then in Augsburg, traveling to nearby cities such as Vienna and Munich, where they attended the 1972 Olympic Games.

The couple returned to Maine when Astbury left the military in 1974.

For the next two years he was a graduate research assistant in the department of agricultural and resource economics at the University of Maine in Orono.

In 1976 he went to work for the Maine Department of Labor as an economic research analyst. He worked for the state for eight years in that position before taking a job in the Bangor Daily News promotions department in 1984.

He became the paper’s business writer in 1986, moving into the newsroom where he would stay for the next 20 years.

An accomplished guitar player, Astbury also was an avid sports fan and enjoyed going to Patriots games and Red Sox games with his son, Will.

Besides his wife and son, Astbury is survived by his parents, a brother, a daughter-in-law, several nieces and nephews and many other relatives.