I never met Burt Shavitz, the Burt’s Bees Co-founder who died yesterday, but after spending the afternoon thumbing through obituaries and profiles I am sure the phrase ‘salt-of-the-earth’ would have immediately been brought to mind. Bearded, grouchy, hilarious, and reclusive Shavitz was cut from his own cloth.
For a time, he made a career as a news photographer in Manhattan before repairing to Maine for a simpler life. After being gifted all the necessary implements of the trade, Burt Shavitz became an apiarist, a beekeeper. It was work he took to easily. He sold honey on the side of the road, quietly carving out a life for himself in hippy serenity. Then, a chance encounter changed everything, as told by the company’s website:
It was the summer of ’84, and Maine artist Roxanne Quimby was thumbing a ride home (back when you could still do that sort of thing). Eventually a bright yellow Datsun pickup truck pulled over, and Roxanne instantly recognized Burt Shavitz, a local fella whose beard was almost as well-known as his roadside honey stand. Burt and Roxanne hit it off, and before long, Roxanne was making candles with unused wax from Burt’s beehives.
They really hit it off. Although Burt told the story a little differently to the New Yorker in 2014:
“She was man-hungry,” he recalled, “and she and I, by spells, fed the hunger.”
Who even talks like that anymore?
Quimby and [Burt] began selling his honey, then candles from his beeswax, and finally—in a masterstroke—his motorcycle-riding, golden-retriever-raising life style. In 1999, Quimby bought Shavitz out for about a hundred and thirty thousand dollars; eight years later, the company was sold to Clorox for $913 million.
The affair cooled. The company relocated to North Carolina. Quimby and Burt lost touch. Quimby eventually threw Burt an extra $4 million when it was her turn to cash in, and in an email to the Washington Post she expressed sadness over his death Sunday evening, calling Burt her “mentor” and “muse”.
The money wasn’t what Burt really wanted. But it did mean he would never have to give up his 50 acres in rural Maine. From the Washington Post:
“In the long run,” he was quoted, “I got the land, and land is everything. … And money is nothing really worth squabbling about.”
RIP Burt.
