Burt Shavitz, Scruffy Face of Burt’s Bees, Dies at 80
By SAM ROBERTS

Burt Shavitz, a rural beekeeper whose homespun marketing for natural personal care products transformed him from an unknown recluse into the familiar scruffy face of a line of balms that healed a million lips, died on Sunday in Bangor, Me. He was 80.

The cause was respiratory problems, said Christina Calbi, a spokeswoman for Burt’s Bees, the company Mr. Shavitz co-founded in 1984 and which was sold to Clorox in 2007 for about $925 million. The brand still bears his bearded visage, wistful eyes and signature striped locomotive engineer’s cap.

Even after the sale, Mr. Shavitz remained a paid spokesman for Burt’s Bees, though he had returned to his hermit’s existence in a 400-square-foot converted turkey coop in Parkman, Me., northwest of Bangor. The abode was equipped with a radio and refrigerator but not a television or running hot water.

“I realized I had it made,” he once said, “because you don’t have to destroy anything to get honey. You can just use the same things over and over again, put it in a quart canning jar, and you’ve got $12.”

In 1984, Mr. Shavitz picked up a 33-year-old hitchhiker, Roxanne Quimby, who became his business and romantic partner. Ms. Quimby, a former 1960s radical, first recycled his leftover beeswax into candles. Then, improving on a formula found in a 19th-century farmer’s journal, she combined the wax with sweet almond oil, and Burt’s Bees lip balm was born, in 1991.

Before long, what had been a $3,000-a-year subsistence business was transformed into a multimillion-dollar purveyor of eco-friendly lip balm, lotions and soaps packaged in school bus yellow containers.

The ingredients weren’t new, but the market for organic beauty ointments was booming. “Many of the products we produced were also produced by Cleopatra,” Mr. Shavitz said.

The original peppermint lip balm is still the brand’s best seller.

This rural beekeeper’s roots were distinctly urban. Ingram Berg Shavitz was born in Manhattan on May 15, 1935. His father, Edward, was an actor. His mother, the former Nathalie Berg, was a sculptor and artist. He grew up in Flushing, Queens, and on Long Island, in Great Neck. He attended college in Delaware but was drafted before he finished and served in the Army in Germany. He also changed his name to Burt.

Instead of joining his grandfather’s graphic design business, he studied photography, worked part-time for Time-Life as a photojournalist and covered for various publications John F. Kennedy’s inaugural, Malcolm X and the civil rights movement, and the first Earth Day, in 1970.

That same year he accepted an arts grant in Ulster County, N.Y., and left Manhattan for good, vacating his $30-a-month apartment on Third Avenue and East 92d Street and heading north with his Volkswagen van and motorcycle.

In Ulster County he worked as a caretaker at Mohonk Mountain House and learned beekeeping as an avocation before eventually moving to Maine. He was driving his yellow Datsun pickup when he spotted Ms. Quimby, a would-be graphic artist getting by as a waitress, hitchhiking from her cabin near Lake Wassookeag in Maine to the local post office.

Their partnership endured for about a decade, ending not long after sales had reached $3 million annually and the company had moved to North Carolina, in 1994, to take advantage of lower taxes and a larger labor pool. Mr. Shavitz said he was forced out after having an affair with an employee. Ms. Quimby bought his one-third share for $130,000 (she owned the other two-thirds), but gave him $4 million more after the company was sold.

“Burt and I shared a long and unique journey through many years and probably many lifetimes together and apart,” Ms. Quimby said on Monday. “I don’t assume that his passing marks the end of that journey.”

In a 2013 documentary titled “Burt’s Buzz,” Mr. Shavitz said, “I’d like never to see her again.”

Mr. Shavitz, who died in a hospital, is survived by a brother, Carl.

Mr. Shavitz fell in love with Maine on childhood vacations.

“I’ve got 40 acres,” he told The New York Times last year. “And it’s good and sufficient and it takes good care of me. There’s no noise. There’s no children screaming. There’s no people getting up at 5 o’clock in the morning and trying to start their car and raising hell. Everybody has their own idea of what a good place to be is, and this is mine.”

He had hawks and owls and stunning sunsets and his neighbors’ good will, he explained, and no claims to gregariousness. Two of his dogs were listed by name in the local telephone directory; he wasn’t.

“A good day,” he said in the documentary, “is when no one shows up and you don’t have to go anywhere.”

Burt’s Bees「蜜蜂爺爺」 80歲走了

美國天然保養品業者Burt’s Bees的共同創辦人柏特．夏維茲（Burt Shavitz）五日在親友圍繞下，因呼吸道併發症病逝於緬因州班戈市，享壽八十。

夏維茲一臉大鬍子的蜜蜂爺爺形象，是Burt’s Bees的活招牌。他是位老嬉皮，也是遺世獨居的養蜂人，1984年他偶然間讓四處搭便車旅行的羅珊．昆比搭上他的便車後，從此生活改觀。昆比是返土歸田的響應者，夏維茲對昆比的創造力和自給自足印象深刻。

昆比1980年代開始利用夏維茲出產的蜜蠟製造各式保養品，兩人成為事業夥伴，1994年昆比將公司遷移至北卡州後，雙方結束商業合作關係。

公司持續擴張，但夏維茲選擇搬回緬因州。夏維茲曾表示，他與員工鬧出緋聞後被迫離開公司。2007年清潔產品公司高樂氏（Clorox Corp）砸下9.25億美元買下Burt’s Bees。

得知夏維茲死訊，昆比以電子郵件告訴美聯社：「夏維茲是個不可思議的人物。他是我的啟蒙，我深感悲痛。」

夏維茲因Burt’s Bees獲得一大筆錢，且繼續成為公司的代言人。公司發表聲明說：「我們從夏維茲的生活學習到，在變化快速、高科技文化中，永不忽視我們與大自然的關係。」

雖然夏維茲在緬因州深居簡出，但他在紐約長大，曾在德國陸軍過軍旅生活，並為時代─生活雜誌攝影，最後才遠離紐約。一度他曾離開緬因州到一個溫暖島嶼過冬，不久又重回該州。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/07/business/burt-shavitz-scruffy-face-of-burts-bees-dies-at-80.html

2015-07-07．聯合報．A13．國際．編譯王麗娟