As we turn onto the first page of another year we cannot forsake 2023 without taking a final glimpse at a phenomenal Mainer who took leave of us during this just past eventful year.

Mainers under the age of 45 likely won’t remember this one-time household name who died last January at the age of 76, but they should.

Dave Silverbrand was for nearly 20 years, from the early 1970s to the early 1990s, the leading — if not the only —  TV journalist in the state who devoted his professional time to human interest reporting. His work was a forerunner to what in the last generation has been popularized by Bill Green’s Maine.

He was also the author of two of the best Maine books of the 1980s: “Marvelous Mainers” and “Dave’s People,” together capturing in literary form the best of his many features. As Maine TV anchor Kim Block recalled, “Dave was a legend in Maine broadcasting — a wonderful storyteller … mentor and friend.”

Dave was born in California in 1946. Shortly after earning a journalism degree at San Jose State he came to Maine, in 1970, first as anchorman for Presque Isle’s WAGM TV.

In 1972, Dave found himself sharing this columnist’s desk in the newsroom at Portland’s Channel 13 (WGME-TV) where he would remain until 1990.

I’ll never forget one of the first stories he did that turned a page on the way Maine TV portrayed the viewers it served.

One day, Dave’s investigative curiosity was aroused by the frequent visits an itinerant shoeshine boy made to the fourth floor of Congress Street’s Gannett building, then the station’s headquarters. Dave wound up following him as he made the rounds to innumerable locations in downtown Portland. Both the young person’s persona, as well as the backdrop of the places on his route, struck such a responsive chord with viewers that news director Mike Craig authorized a plethora of further segments in a similar mold.

In effect, Dave soon became the Charles Kuralt of Maine, profiling a backwoods hermit one day and putting the spotlight on a blind lobster fisherman the next. It was as if John Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charley” had been made into a TV series. (It may be a coincidence that both Silverbrand and Steinbeck were born in California’s Salinas Valley.)

Among Dave’s profiles was one of Sanford barber Emile Roy. It was a connection that unlocked the door to a friendship with one of the barber’s customers, future President George H.W. Bush.

When in the 1980s Silverbrand found himself in China at the same time as Bush, a note from Dave to Bush mentioning that he was a friend of his Maine barber and “just wanted to say hello,”  prompted Bush to soon call back. It marked the start of a long-time association between the two; Silverbrand later recalled a fishing trip in which Bush drove his speedboat “like a fighter plane.”

By 1990, Dave was to be found back in California, continuing his career in feature journalism for a number of North Coast TV stations.

It was while back on the West Coast that Silverbrand developed a strong interest in Cuban culture, frequently visiting the Caribbean island. “Nothing says love like a cup of Cuban ice cream,” he reported, in vintage Silverbrand fashion, in 2016.

Silverbrand was predeceased by his wife of 20 years, Nina Winogradov, who was killed while walking their dog at an intersection near a middle school in Eureka, California, in 2013. He is survived by one child, a daughter, Susannah, from an earlier marriage in Maine.

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