Posted Apr. 30, 2008
Former Times Record publisher and Brunswick, Maine, civic leader Cam Niven died Monday night at Mid Coast Senior Health Center, leaving behind him a community enriched and engaged because of his presence. He was 78.
To some, he loomed like Midas, helping turn community organizations within his reach into some of the area's greatest treasures: his alma mater Bowdoin College, Mid Coast Hospital, Pejepscot Historical Society, Curtis Memorial Library, Maine Maritime Museum, the United Way, the town of Brunswick, Crystal Spring Farm, Brunswick Rotary and Maine State Music Theatre, to name some.
Niven also presided over a variety of professional interests, such as running his family's newspapers, presiding over and founding a score of professional groups promoting newspapers, installing new technology initiatives like offset press and overseeing banking interests for several financial institutions.
He is acknowledged not only for his official associations with cultural institutions, professional groups and civic projects, but also for his personal influence.
"He was truly one of Brunswick's wise men," said Steve McCausland, a Brunswick resident who worked with Niven on projects like the Topsham-Brunswick bypass and Brunswick Industrial Park.
As a town councilor for 20 years, McCausland was often involved with issues editorialized in Niven's newspaper, The Times Record. But although McCausland hasn't always agreed with the point, he appreciated Niven's intent.
"I didn't agree with all of them, but overall his editorials reflected a genuine concern and love of the town of Brunswick," McCausland said.
Beginnings
Niven was born in Boston on Nov. 8, 1929, but he grew up in Brunswick on Longfellow Avenue next door to childhood playmates and lifelong friends the Morrell brothers.
Bob Morrell called Niven a fine citizen, ranking Brunswick as one of the most important aspects of Niven's life.
"Family, of course, and, Brunswick, next I would say," he said.
His stake in the community started early. He went to Brunswick schools, Hebron Academy and then to college at Bowdoin, where he graduated in 1952.
Bowdoin College would remain a key interest in his life, as former college president Bob Edwards attests.
"He was a tremendous loyalist," Edwards said, noting that Niven served on the Bowdoin's presidential search committee when Edwards was hired as president. "It's a little bit before you realize how smart he was. He was a person of profound perception and reflection," he said.
Edwards grew to realize the depth of Niven's insight as he watched him exert a stabilizing influence on the college as it changed.
"During my time, Bowdoin went through some very difficult changes. We had to move finances and make changes from fraternities to social houses, but through all that he was as solid as a rock," Edwards said. "I'm not sure you have people like this anymore."
Edwards' wife, Blythe, recalls how she served with Niven on a committee to erect an eight-foot bronze statue of Bowdoin graduate and Civil War hero Joshua Chamberlain on the upper end of Maine Street across from Chamberlain's house.
"We had a lot of different forces around the table, and he always maintained a balance and sense of humor," she said.
After graduating from Bowdoin in 1952, 100 years after Chamberlain, he worked for E.I. Dupont Co. managing production of nylon and Dacron before being drafted into the U.S. Army, serving as a sergeant overseas in Heidelberg, Germany.
Then he returned to Brunswick, beginning a career and cultivating his community through pages of newsprint and civic involvement while starting a family of three children with his wife, Elizabeth Manning, whom he married in 1964.
Niven's grandfather, Frank B. Nichols, founded the Brunswick Record and published the Bath Daily Times, his father Paul K. Niven published the Brunswick Record, and it was under Niven's leadership that the two papers merged in 1967.
"He successfully combined his role as a publisher and his inner need to be involved in any number of civic endeavors in a way that made things happen," said James McCarthy, managing editor of The Times Record who has worked at the paper for more than 20 years.
Cam's son, Doug, who would succeed him as publisher in 1997, recognized early that his father saw information as integral to a good community and a good company.
"Back in the mid-60s, there was a strike where employees walked out. He learned from that that it was so important to have a family atmosphere and know all the employees. He really wanted them to know as much information about the business that he could provide for them," Doug said.
Besides running his own paper, Niven subscribed to six or seven newspapers to quench his desire to read and learn current events.
"It was hard to find him not reading newspapers," Doug said.
He remembers Niven reading a paper when the two went out on their boat to go fishing. An entire school of fish swam by, and Niven continued to read his paper.
"The image I have is of Cam walking around with a folded up newspaper in his left hand and smiling and greeting everybody with his right hand," said Jayne Palmer, a Bath resident who grew up in Brunswick.
"I was privileged enough to write a column when I was a teenager in high school," Palmer said. Niven's desire to place information on local students with news about world events was indicative of his community-based philosophy, she said.
In her role as past president of the Bath Rotary Club, Palmer also represents another aspect of Niven's community involvement.
An involved member of the local business community, Niven resigned from the Brunswick Rotary Club when the national organization refused to admit women in the mid-1980s.
Without the stand of people like Niven who sent a message to their communities with their actions, Palmer says the Rotary wouldn't have survived.
"It would have been an organization that stagnated," she said.
Involvement
Rotary and other organizations like Curtis Memorial Library and Mid Coast Hospital benefited from both the changing impact of his ideas and the stabilizing reality of his support.
"He was an incredibly creative and kind human being who loved his community to a tremendous depth," said Steve Podgajny, former Curtis Memorial Library director who worked with Niven on the library's expansion and development. "He knew how to get things done, but more than that he really had great ideas."
An exchange of ideas fostered by Niven helped with the merger of Regional Memorial Hospital in Brunswick and Bath Memorial Hospital to form Mid Coast Hospital in 1991.
The merger resulted in a new hospital facility off Bath Road, for which Niven helped lead fundraising efforts.
"We set out with a goal of raising $4 million. Through Cam's efforts we raised $6.5 million for the community," Mid Coast President Herbert Paris said.
The new hospital facility was only one project he tackled during his 40-year involvement with the hospital, an institution Niven promoted to advance the needs of his community.
"It was his nature to be concerned about the welfare of people," Paris said.
But what drove his community involvement is perhaps best understood from Niven's lifelong friend Richard Morrell, who like Niven, graduated from Bowdoin and settled in Brunswick to run a family-owned business that would become Downeast Energy.
Childhood buddies, they remained friends as adults, marrying sisters and sharing similar interests like tennis and golf as well as love of town affairs.
"I'd describe him as outgoing, a good listener, a take-charge person, plenty of follow through, thoughtful, considerate of other people," Morrell said.
Their friendship transcended differing views on politics. "Our wives forbid us to talk about it," Morrell joked, but conceded they weren't all that far apart in their philosophies.
"He certainly wasn't a flaming liberal, and I wasn't a dyed-in-the-wool conservative," he said. "Once in a while we'd get a little hot on politics, but mostly we were just plain good friends."
The two often collaborated to fundraise for community projects, a task at which Niven was particularly adept.
"I'd go along as his straight man," he said.
Morrell said Niven succeeded in his efforts to better his community for the same reason that all leaders do and the same reason leaders like Niven will be missed.
"They do it because — No. 1 — they enjoy it; and maybe, even before that, because they think they ought to," he said.
Obituary: Campbell Niven, 78
BRUNSWICK — Campbell B. "Cam" Niven, 78, of Atwood Lane, died Monday, April 28, 2008, at the Mid Coast Senior Health Center.
He was born in Boston, Mass., on Nov. 8, 1929, a son of Paul Kendall and Dorothy Nichols Niven. He and family returned to Brunswick in 1931, and while growing up on Longfellow Avenue, he attended local schools.
He was a 1948 graduate of Hebron Academy, and a 1952 graduate of Bowdoin College. He married Elizabeth Manning in New Britain, Conn., on April 4, 1964.
From 1952 to 1954, he worked for the E.I. Dupont Co. in Nylon and Dacron Production Management. In 1954, he was drafted into the Army. He served in the Public Information Division, Headquarters, U.S. Army, Europe, in Heidelberg, Germany.
After returning to Maine in 1956, he became advertising manager for the Brunswick Record and served in that capacity until 1961 when he became publisher. He was also publisher for the Bath Daily Times from 1960 to 1967, and then publisher for The Times Record from 1967 until retiring in 1997.
He served in several capacities for many civic and professional activities. He served as chairman of Brunswick Federal Savings, director of Bethel Bancorp, director and chairman of the Long Range Planning Committee and director of PAGE. He also was involved with Mid Coast Health Services, the Brunswick Industrial Committee and The Westerly Sun in Rhode Island, and was a member of the Coastal Cancer Treatment Center Committee.
Other organizations for which he served as president are Regional Memorial Hospital, the New England Newspaper Association, the New England Press Association, the Brunswick Area United Fund, the Maine Daily Newspaper Publishers Association, the Brunswick Rotary Club, the Brunswick Chamber of Commerce and the Brunswick Golf Club.
He served as chairman of the Brunswick Planning Board, as well as director and member of several other newspaper and advertising associations. He also served on the Brunswick Downtown Revitalization Committee and the Bowdoin Presidential Search Committee.
He was predeceased by a brother, Paul Kendall Niven Jr.
Surviving are his wife of Brunswick; two sons, Andrew Campbell Niven of Amesbury, Mass., and Douglas Manning Niven and his wife, Nicole, of Brunswick; a daughter, Alison Elizabeth Nynka and her husband, Peter J., of Ormond Beach, Fla.; and two grandchildren, Tyler Douglas Niven and Cameron Manning Niven, both of Brunswick.
A celebration of his life will be held at 2 p.m. on May 10, at the First Parish Church in Brunswick. There will be a private interment at Oak Grove Cemetery in Bath at a later date.
Memorial contributions may be made to Mid Coast Hospital, Attn: Development Office, 123 Medical Center Drive, Brunswick, Maine 04011; or to the Campbell B. Niven Scholarship Fund, Attn: Stephen P. Hyde, Bowdoin College, 4100 College Station., Brunswick, ME 04011.
Arrangements are by the Brackett Funeral Home, 29 Federal St., Brunswick. Condolences can be expressed at www.brackettfuneralhome.com.
