Friends and family of the late Ted Riehle recently gathered on his beloved Savage Island for a final salute to the author of Vermont’s anti-billboard law. The event had Riehle written all over it, from the sanctioned skinny dipping to the ash-sprinkling fly-over. The celebration was dubbed, appropriately, “Spread Ted.”

They just don’t make em like “Big Ted” anymore — an eccentric, nudist Republican who was living off the grid way before the term “energy-efficient” was coined. I got to know Riehle while I was profiling him for Seven Days. He was a compelling “subject” who quickly became a friend. Here’s my initial take on him.

My final take: He would have appreciated the stunt factor of being released from a plane — Riehle was a pilot — along the west coast of Savage on a beautiful summer day.

Photo by Matthew Thorsen.

This article appears in Aug 27 – Sep 2, 2008.

Paula Routly is publisher, editor-in-chief and cofounder of Seven Days. Her first glimpse of Vermont from the Adirondacks led her to Middlebury College for a closer look. After graduation, in 1983 she moved to Burlington and worked for the Flynn, the Vanguard Press, the Burlington Free Press and Vermont Times – in that order. In 1995, she and Pamela Polston started Seven Days newspaper. Routly ran the business and built the news side of the operation, which she edited for years. She has spearheaded...