Passing along the 'Gaddis Cup'

Nominations are open for the 2019 Gadabout Gaddis Cup Award, which will be presented on the last Sunday in September at a luncheon at a rustic western Maine hill country airstrip named for the same individual.

Roscoe Vernon Gaddis was known to TV fans of the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s as Gadabout Gaddis, host of Outdoors with Liberty Mutual and The Flying Fisherman, and as a Piper Cherokee pilot. Legend has it that he fished in every state, and in Canada and Mexico. His shows’ folksy fishing-and-flying format earned him an Emmy Award nomination in 1968.

Gaddis told various interviewers that his piloting in pursuit of piscatorial perfection earned him the nickname Gadabout. Gaddis died at age 90 in 1986.

Gaddis’s ties to Maine were established when he visited the region in the 1920s as a fishing tackle salesman, eventually acquiring the airstrip in Bingham that continues to bear his name.

The namesake award—a trophy that is handed off from each winner to the next—was conceived by a local chamber of commerce, and others continued the tradition after that group dissolved, said Lisa Reece, leader of the Maine Aeronautics Association and the 2015 award recipient.

The cup “has been presented for over 30 years to those who have supported and shaped aviation in Maine and whose passions have championed general aviation throughout Maine and New England,” says her group’s website. The current honoree is Keith Strange, production manager of PK Floats of Lincoln, Maine.

Reece announced the opening of nominations for the 2019 award in February during the annual Maine Aviation Forum at the Owls Head Transportation Museum.

Those with a candidate in mind—it could be an individual or an organization—can fill out this nomination form. The nomination deadline is Aug. 20.