How do you thank someone for saving your life? Greg Morin starts with lunch. “I call them ‘Greg’s Angels,’ ” said Morin, 56, as he settled in for a group photo Tuesday amid the noon rush at Espo’s Trattoria in Portland. “You don’t have to write about me — write about them!” Fair enough. Meet […]
Bill Nemitz
Bill Nemitz has worked as a journalist in Maine since 1977, when he became a reporter for the Morning Sentinel in Waterville after graduating from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
He moved to Portland in 1983, working first as a reporter for the Evening Express and later as a city editor and assistant managing editor/sports for the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram. He began writing his column in 1995. While focusing on Maine people and issues, his work has taken him three times to Iraq and twice to Afghanistan, where he was embedded with members of the Maine Army National Guard and the Army Reserve; to Belfast, Northern Ireland, for the 1998 referendum on the Good Friday Peace Accord; to Manhattan for the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks; to the Gulf Coast for the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; and to Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. Nemitz is a past president of the Maine Press Association and for many years taught journalism part-time at St. Joseph's College of Maine in Standish. He also served for eight years, including three as chairman, on the board of trustees for the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland. In 2004, the Maine Press Association named Nemitz Maine Journalist of the Year for his reporting on the Maine Army National Guard’s 133rd Engineer Battalion in Iraq. In 2007, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the New England Newspaper Association. In 2015, Nemitz was inducted into the Maine Press Association Hall of Fame. Nemitz lives in Buxton with his wife, Andrea. They have five children and four grandchildren.
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Bill Nemitz: Don’t miss the boat on lobster balls, Governor
Dear Gov. LePage, How goes the vacation? I’m not sure if you’ve been firing up your laptop between golf rounds down there in Jamaica, but it sure looks like you picked a great week to flee damp, dreary Maine for a few days of fun in the sun. Say what? You’re tuning us out completely? […]
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Bill Nemitz: GOP bills exploit kids in workplace
Talk about a diversionary tactic. While Gov. Paul LePage has much of Maine in a lather over where he’s hiding the now infamous Department of Labor lobby mural (pssst … look in the electrical closet!), Republicans in the Legislature are hard at work ramming through something infinitely more troubling. They want to put Maine’s kids […]
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Bill Nemitz: Linked by disasters, sister-states bond
Late last week, as the horror of Japan’s earthquake, tsunami and nuclear catastrophe was just beginning to unfold, Gov. Paul LePage issued a statement of condolence and prayer for the victims of that country’s worst calamity since the end of World War II. LePage also noted that Maine “has a sister-state relationship with the Prefecture […]
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Bill Nemitz: Taking stock as chief of Maine conservative think tank suddenly rises to power
Next Tuesday, a yet-to-be-determined number of Maine legislators will sit down to a private dinner at The Senator Inn in Augusta to talk welfare reform with two very influential players in Maine politics. One is Mary Mayhew, the new commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services. The other is the evening’s host: Tarren […]
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Bill Nemitz: Penalize politicians for broken promises?
Feeling double-crossed by your elected officials? Wondering how, time after time, they get away with promising one thing on the campaign trail only to pull a 180 once they’re safely installed in office? Looking for a way to throw them out on their keisters? Arthur Kyricos of York Harbor just might be your guy. “It’s […]
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Bill Nemitz: When must elderly drivers give up the keys?
It was the ultimate role reversal. There I sat on the phone one afternoon a few years ago, listening to my father, who was near tears, pleading for me and my sister to give him back his car keys. He was in the final months of terminal cancer and, because of a recent fall, had […]
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Bill Nemitz: Answers by Maine Gov. LePage result in questions
First, a correction. In my latest letter to Gov. Paul LePage, on Sunday, I referred to Devon Raymond as “a Jamaican lad you adopted in 2002 at the age of 17.” I was wrong. LePage may call Raymond “my adopted son,” love him like an “adopted son” and pay his college tuition like an “adopted […]
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Bill Nemitz: Post-shooting finger-pointers miss the point
Monday morning, while the blame game for last weekend’s multiple shooting in Arizona shifted into overdrive, former Maine Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Daniel Wathen sat down for an informal chat with members of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee. Wathen had come to update veteran and rookie lawmakers alike on the ins and outs of the […]
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Bill Nemitz: Inaugural time in rhyme from the mind of a poet
PORTLAND — So there I stood Tuesday in Longfellow Square, staring up with sympathy at the imposing statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Why sympathy? Because a few days ago, inaugural director Brent Littlefield announced in no uncertain terms that “we’re not going to have any poems being read” at today’s swearing-in of Gov.-elect Paul LePage. […]