NEWSMAKERS

NEWSMAKERS

Don McLean’s arrest shakes his Maine town

PORTLAND, Maine

The picturesque town of Camden was reeling Tuesday from the arrest of “American Pie” singer Don McLean, a fixture in the community.

Police arrested McLean on a misdemeanor domestic-violence charge Monday, and he later posted $10,000 bail and was released from jail. Police and court officials didn’t say much about the arrest Tuesday other than McLean will be in court to respond to it next month.

Select Board member Leonard Lookner, a retired former restaurant owner, said “the entire town was shocked” by McLean’s arrest.

McLean is well-known in the Midcoast town of about 5,000 residents for having charity concerts to raise money for education, Lookner said. He said McLean’s wife, photographer Patrisha McLean, is known for opening her beloved rose garden to local residents.

“They are both really special people,” Lookner said. “I must say I was absolutely shocked. We all were. He’s done wonderful things for the community.”

A spokesman for Don McLean didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment Tuesday. The 70-year-old singer-songwriter and his wife live in a home overlooking Mount Megunticook in Camden, which is about 80 miles up the Maine coast from Portland and is popular with tourists and yachting enthusiasts.

“American Pie,” McLean’s signature hit, is about the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper in a 1959 plane crash. The original manuscript and notes to it sold at auction for $1.2 million this year.

Local officials spent Tuesday fielding calls about McLean’s arrest, which attracted interest from media around the country.

Burns to deliver Jefferson Lecture

NEW YORK

Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has been chosen to deliver the 2016 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, according to the National Endowment for the Humanities, which produces the event.

Burns will deliver the lecture May 9 at Washington’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

He will talk about race in America, a topic that he has explored through nearly 40 years of directing and producing historical documentaries including “The Civil War” miniseries and, debuting on PBS in April, a film about Jackie Robinson.

The Jefferson Lecture is the highest honor the federal government bestows for intellectual achievement in the humanities.

Associated Press