Burt Shavitz

Reclusive co-founder of the Burt’s Bees natural balms company

n Burt Shavitz, beekeeper and entrepreneur. Born: 15 May, 1935, in New York. Died: 5 July, 2015, in Bangor, Maine, aged 80.

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, has died, aged 80.

The cause was respiratory problems, said Christina Calbi, a spokeswoman for Burt’s Bees, the company Shavitz co-founded in 1984 and which was sold to Clorox in 2007 for about $925 million (£600m). The brand still bears his bearded visage, wistful eyes and signature striped cap.

Even after the sale, 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, Maine, northwest of Bangor. The abode was equipped with a radio and refrigerator but not a television or running hot water.

“I realised 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, Shavitz picked up a 33-year-old hitchhiker, Roxanne Quimby, who became his business and romantic partner. 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 yellow containers.

The ingredients were not

Court circular

new, but the market for organic beauty ointments was booming. “Many of the products we produced were also produced by Cleopatra,” 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 New York in 1935. His father, Edward, was an actor. His mother, the former Nathalie Berg, was a sculptor and artist. He was drafted before finishing college 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, New York, and left Manhattan for good, vacating his $30-amonth apartment and heading north with his Volkswagen van and motorcycle. In Ulster County he worked as a caretaker at Mohonk Mountain House and learned beekeeping before eventually moving to Maine.

He was driving his yellow Datsun pickup when he spotted 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 $3m annually and the company had moved to North Carolina, in 1994, to take advantage of lower taxes and a larger labour pool. Shavitz said he was forced out after having an affair with an employee.

Quimby bought his one-third share for $130,000 (she owned the other two-thirds), but gave him $4m 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,” said Quimby.

“I don’t assume that his passing marks the end of that journey.” In a 2013 documentary called Burt’s Buzz, Shavitz said: “I’d like never to see her again.”

Shavitz is survived by a brother, Carl.

Shavitz fell in love with Maine on childhood holidays. “I’ve got 40 acres,” he said 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, owls and stunning sunsets and his neighbours’ goodwill, 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.” l Copyright New York Times 2015. Distributed by NYT syndication service. On this day in 1965 Great Train robber Ronnie Biggs escaped from Wandsworth Prison and later went to live in Brazil 1999: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was published by Bloomsbury. 2007: Roger Federer of Switzerland equalled Björn Borg’s Wimbledon record when he defeated Rafael Nadal 7-6, 4-6, 7-6, 2-6, 6-2 to win his fifth successive singles title. 2010: John Prescott was introduced to the House of Lords as Baron Prescott of Kingstonupon-hull. 2011: The space shuttle Atlantis launched from Florida on a 12-day mission, marking the beginning of the end for the space shuttle era. 2012: Andy Murray was defeated 4-6, 7-5, 6-3, 6-4 by Roger Federer in the Wimbledon singles final. 2014: Brazil suffered the humiliation of a 7-1 defeat by Germany in the World Cup semi-final, the host nation’s first competitive home loss for 39 years.

2 JULY

951: The city of Paris was founded. 1249: King Alexander II died on the isle of Kerrara in Oban Bay. 1296: Abdication of King John Balliol at Montrose. 1497: Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama set out on his first voyage. He became the first European to reach India by sea. 1790: The forth and Clyde Canal was opened after 22 years of construction. 1836: Charles Darwin reached St Helena on board HMS Beagle. 1884: The National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children was founded. 1905: Soldiers of the Russian battleship Potemkin, who had mutinied, surrendered to Romanian authorities, who subsequently turned the ship over to Russian authorities. 1918: National Savings stamps went on sale in Britain. 1930: The Bennie Railplane, a method of rail transport, moving along an overhead rail by means of propellers, was given its first run on a test track at Milngavie. Despite initial enthusiasm, it was never developed. 1949: South Africa passed the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, banning the marriage or sexual relationship between white people and those of other races. 1963: USA banned all monetary transactions with Cuba. 1965: Ronald Biggs, one of the Great Train robbers, scaled the wall of Wandsworth Prison with a rope ladder and landed on a van outside. He had served 15 months of his sentence. He settled in Brazil but returned to Britain and gave himself up in 2001. 1967: Billie Jean King beat Ann Jones 6-3, 6-4 to win the Wimbledon ladies singles title. 1973: Paul Getty III, grandson of John Paul Getty, the world’s richest man, was kidnapped. After having his right ear cut off, he was returned for a ransom of $2.9 million. 1978: Bjorn Borg defeated Jimmy Connors 6-2, 6-2, 6-3 to win the Wimbledon singles title. 1990: Greg Lemond won his third Tour de France. 1992: Mike Gatting and 15 other English cricketers suspended for five years for touring South Africa had their bans lifted. 1994: A preliminary trial ruled that there was enough evidence to try OJ Simpson for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and waiter Ronald Lyle Goldman. 1994: Space Shuttle Columbia 17 was launched. 1996: Martina Hingis became the youngest Wimbledon champion at the age of 15 years and 282 days when she and Helen Sukova won the women’s doubles.

BIRTHDAYS

Anjelica Huston, actress, 64; Kevin Bacon, actor, 57; Beck (born Beck Hansen), pop musician, 45; Sophia Bush, actress, 33; Billy Crudup, actor, 47; Sourav Ganguly, cricketer, 43; Robbie Keane, Irish footballer, 35; Sarah Kennedy MBE, television presenter, 65; Dame Ellen Macarthur DBE, roundthe-world record-breaking sailor, 39; Pauline Quirke, actress, 56; Russell Taylor MBE, cartoonist, 55; Milo Ventimiglia, actor, 38; Brian Walden, MP 1964-74 and broadcaster, 83; Matthew Wright, TV presenter and journalist, 50.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1831 John Pemberton, inventor of Coca-cola; 1836 Joseph Chamberlain, Liberal statesman; 1838 Count Zeppelin, airship pioneer; 1839 John D Rockefeller, philanthropist; 1851 Sir Arthur Evans, archaeologist who excavated Knossos; 1885 Hugo Boss, fashion designer; 1934 Marty Feldman, comic actor. Deaths: 1623 Gregory XV, Italian pope; 1726 John Ker, Scottish spy; 1822 Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet; 1822 Sir Henry Raeburn, portrait painter, King’s Limner; 1855 Sir William Parry, Arctic explorer; 1859 FJ Oscar I, king of Sweden/norway; 1957 William Cadbury, chocolate maker; 1967 Vivien Leigh, actress; 1973 Wilfred Rhodes, English Test cricketer (first Englishman to score 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in Test matches); 1996 Amschel Rothschild, banker; 1994 Kim Il Sung, president of North Korea; 2011 Betty Ford, former US first lady; 2012 Ernest Borgnine, actor.