Beloved Augusta Chronicle outdoors editor Bill Baab dies at age 90

Joe Hotchkiss, Augusta Chronicle

Tue, December 23, 2025 at 9:05 AM UTC

3 min read

Bill Baab displays part of his antique bottle collection in this photo from 2007. Baab, who spent 35 years as The Augusta Chronicle's outdoors editor, died Dec. 21 at age 90.

Bill Baab, the longtime Augusta Chronicle sports writer and editor with a sportsman's heart and a collector's soul, has died. He was 90.

As The Chronicle's outdoors editor for 35 years, Baab wrote weekly newspaper columns for generations of Augusta-area anglers.

Readers followed his valued fishing information and advice almost as gospel. When Baab retired in 2000, for the first time, Waynesboro resident Tyron Morris wrote a letter to The Chronicle mourning the loss of "Reverend Bill."

Belvedere Marine owner David Annis told The Chronicle at the time that it wasn't uncommon to read about one of Baab's hot fishing spots only to find the location crowded with fishermen the very next day.

Since 2000, Baab had continued to help edit The Chronicle's sports section off and on before returning for a short time as fishing editor, stepping down in June 2022 at age 87. Generations of colleagues appreciated his quick wit, though not always his puns, and his vast knowledge of local history.

Baab was also a collector, an admitted "pack rat" who grew up fueling his curiosity about the world through immersive accumulation of coins, stamps, books, and more. At age 14, he won first prize at an Augusta YMCA hobby show for his collection of shells.

Baab's collection of collections included unusual pets. His 15-pound gopher tortoise, Goliath, would follow his little sisters to the mailbox each day, according to a 1955 Chronicle feature story about Baab's hobbies. The article appeared shortly after he started working for the paper as a copy boy.

Starting about 1969, his collector's eye turned to antique bottles, particularly the ones from Augusta-area dairies, drugstores, and breweries that revealed small chapters of local history. He wrote and published Augusta on Glass, a history of the city told through the evolution of glass bottles, in 2007.

In 2014, he and his surviving wife, Bea, donated their 514-piece bottle collection to the Augusta Museum of History. Visitors can still visit the museum's "Baab's Bottles" exhibit.

William Henry Baab Jr. was born in Pennsylvania and moved with his family to Augusta in 1940 to a modest house on Heath Street in the Summerville neighborhood.

He graduated from Boys' Catholic High School in 1953 and served a short hitch in the U.S. Navy before returning to Augusta in 1955. By 1957, he was part of The Chronicle writing staff covering general-assignment sports, writing book reviews, and penning a weekly boating column.

He left the paper briefly to work first in public relations for the state of Georgia's then-Game and Fish Commission, then as sports editor of the Thomasville Times-Enterprise in south Georgia in 1961.

Baab rejoined The Chronicle as outdoors editor in 1964.

Funeral arrangements are being finalized by Thomas Poteet & Sons Funeral Home on Davis Road.

Reeling in the years: Fishing editor Bill Baab calls it quits after 60 years in journalism

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Augusta outdoors journalist Bill Baab reveled in local nature, history

About Our Ads

Source