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The Paul Bunyan statue on Main Street in Bangor used to get dressed up all the time. Over the years, he’s worn a Shriners fez, a VFW cap, a Boy Scout neckerchief and a bandana in honor of a Willie Nelson concert at the Bangor Auditorium. In 1959, Dow Air Force Base airmen placed a 40-foot lei on Paul in honor of Hawaii becoming the 50th state in the union.
In 1997, however, those sartorial flourishes on Bangor’s beloved lumberjack came to an abrupt end, thanks to a very public showdown between a nationally syndicated radio shock jock and a Bangor city councilor over what sorts of things the city would allow Paul to wear.
It all began innocuously enough. The Bangor Daily News published a story in the July 19, 1997, edition of the paper that detailed how Martha Dudman, a co-owner of local radio station WWMJ, hoped to put a T-shirt on the statue reading “Welcome to Bangor, Mr. Imus!” ahead of the October appearance at the Bangor Civic Center by broadcaster Don Imus, whose show WWMJ aired in syndication.
Imus was nationally popular in the 1990s for his no-holds-barred on-air personality, and his show, “Imus in the Morning,” at one point aired on more than 100 radio stations across the country. Imus was notorious for his commentary, which regularly included racist, misogynist, homophobic, anti-Semitic and anti-Arab language views.
That’s what Bangor City Council chair Pat Blanchette took issue with, when the radio station put the T-shirt idea before the council, which needed to approve or deny the request. When Paul wore things before, it was generally for local service or youth organizations that were doing good things in the community. Don Imus, Blanchette said, was the opposite of that.
“I’m not at all comfortable with what’s going to come out of that man’s mouth,” Blanchette told the BDN at the time. “He’s rude, crude and very offensive. I want no part of inflating his already oversized ego.”
Imus responded to her comments on his radio show. Unsurprisingly, he was not thrilled, and called Blanchette a “frigid hag,” a “nitwit” and a “moron,” and later said he planned to “riddle the Paul Bunyan statue with bullets.” He also extended his vitriol to BDN city reporter Roxanne Moore Saucier, who wrote the initial stories about the Imus flap.
In an editorial, the BDN excoriated both Imus’ comments and the entire T-shirt idea, noting that merely disagreeing with the proposition had already resulted in Imus bad-mouthing the entire city to his millions of listeners. Letters to the editor poured in, with some voicing their support for Imus, and others calling him a “loud-mouthed, paramecium-brained jerk.”
At a loss for what to do, the Bangor City Council postponed its vote from Aug. 11 to Aug. 25, and managed to quickly draft a new set of guidelines for what sorts of decorations could adorn public property like Paul.
At that meeting, the council voted to adopt a new ordinance reading “The use of city of Bangor monuments or statues to advertise or otherwise call attention to an event or celebration to be held at Bass Park or elsewhere within the city of Bangor shall not be permitted.” And, with that, Paul Bunyan — alongside Hannibal Hamlin, Lady Victory and other statues around town — now had a dress code.
There were still two months to go before Imus’ Bangor appearance on Oct. 21 of that year, but much of the furor died down after the final kibosh was put on the T-shirt business. When the radio host arrived for his live broadcast at the civic center, Blanchette — who maintained her opinions but proved herself to be a good sport — presented him with a pair of earrings made out of dried moose poop.
Blanchette died in 2016, and Imus died in 2019, 12 years after being fired by CBS Radio for making racist comments on his show. In 2018, Maine playwright Laura Emack wrote a play, “The Pride of Bangor (or, What Not To Wear),” based on the brouhaha. And to this day, the Paul Bunyan statue’s outfit hasn’t changed. After all, it’s against the rules.
