Robert F. Baldwin

Remembering Robert F. Baldwin
1934 – 2007Bob Baldwin was a modern day troubadour, singing and playing banjo, collecting and telling stories wherever he went. He was born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1934 to a family that moved often as they, and the country, worked their way out of the Great Depression and through World War II. As a child he attended 12 grade schools, and the excitement of exploring new places and new experiences stayed with him all his life. He hitchhiked, hopped freight trains, and sailed on square-riggers. As a reporter he traveled as far east as Israel and as far west as the refugee camps on the Thai-Cambodian border. Wherever he went, of course, he collected stories. One weekly newspaper for which he often wrote listed him on the masthead as ‘storyteller.’

Bob loved the sea. Everything about the ocean interested him: the rivers that flowed into it, the lakes that the rivers flowed from, the creatures that lived in them all. He loved to go fishing in ponds near his home in Maine. He would hoist a canoe onto his car and spend the day on the water, watching the actions of the predators and the prey. Often he would return home after a day of fishing with nothing to put into the pan for supper; he had too much sympathy for the prey.

He often stopped at the Rachel Carson Memorial Tidal Pool, which was on the way to or from many places he and his family went for picnics. He loved to explore the tidal pool with his grandchildren, or anyone else’s grandchildren if his own were not around.

In May, when the alewives were running, he spent hours at the local fish ladder, watching as hordes of the herring-like fish struggled to swim up stream to the lake where they could spawn. Townspeople had raised money to build a sort of staircase made of stones, and fitted with resting areas to make the hard climb up a bit easier for the fish. He was fascinated by the alewives’ annual struggle, and the behavior of the seagulls and ospreys and eagles and herons that came to feast on them.

For several years before his death in 2007, he and his wife, Annabelle, visited schools where he read This is the Sea that Feeds Us, sang songs and told stories of the sea, and talked about the marine food web which is at the heart of that stunning picture book.