Mark Lewis Travis

Mark Travis passed away Saturday, November 2, 2024, peacefully and surrounded by his family at Massachusetts General Hospital, following a rapidly progressive infection. 

Through his lifelong dedication to local journalism, his mentorship of dozens of reporters and editors, his volunteer service to his community, and his devotion to his family, Mark touched countless lives. 

Mark was born April 15, 1957 to Lewis (Frank) Travis and Martha (Marty) Travis in Dover, New Hampshire, and spent his childhood in Andover, Massachusetts. Growing up, Mark’s house was the destination for neighborhood children. Fueled by the freshly baked whoopie pies and cookies their mother made, Mark and his three younger siblings, Michael, Phillip, and Rebecca, took part in legendary hijinks: throwing snowballs at passing cars, hitting golf balls off the staircase landing, and – on at least one occasion – building model planes, lighting them on fire, and throwing them out the window.  

A cross-country family road trip in a VW bus during Mark’s childhood is prominent in family lore – notably for his sudden ascension to the post of navigator after Marty’s map-reading skills were called into question, and also for the mass quantities of McDonald’s hamburgers consumed by the family as they traveled across state lines.

 Mark attended Brown University, working throughout his time there and majoring in history, which was to be a lifelong passion. He graduated in 1979.

 After college, Mark got a job as a reporter at the Concord Monitor, working part-time and covering Pittsfield, New Hampshire. Shortly afterward, he moved to Lebanon, New Hampshire, to work as a reporter and regional editor for the Valley News. It was in Lebanon that he took keen notice of a neighbor in his apartment building, spending weeks working up the nerve to approach her by asking to borrow her vacuum cleaner. Mark married Brenda in Woodstock, NY, in August 1982. 

 In 1983, Mark and Brenda moved to Florida, where Mark worked at the St. Petersburg Times, first as a reporter and then as a bureau chief, working in Inverness, Brooksfield, and Tallahassee. 

In 1986, Mark returned to the Concord Monitor to serve as a reporter and editor, and shortly after, he and Brenda settled in Canterbury, New Hampshire, which would become their home and community for the better part of 40 years.  

While in Canterbury, they became parents – first to Ben, and then to Leanna. Mark turned out to have a knack for fatherhood, taking the children sledding in the woods and helping them build elaborate school projects, including a sugar-cube replica of the White House, a clay model of Mount Rushmore, and a Swiss cheese-based reproduction of Mount Matterhorn. “He was always all in,” Ben recalls. Mark also displayed great zeal in proofreading his children’s school assignments, and Ben remembers rewriting one particular paper by hand five times before it met his dad’s standards.  

Ben and Leanna fondly remember visiting the Monitor on Saturdays with their father, scribbling in reporters’ notebooks borrowed from the supply closet and scrounging for dropped change under the reporters’ desks to buy their favorite junk food in the vending machines. A rare Saturday night highlight involved being brought to the paper in their pajamas to watch the papers come off the press. 

 At the Monitor, Mark served as a mentor for dozens of young reporters. “Forty years and a half dozen papers later, I haven't found a better -- or kinder -- editor than Mark,” said Ben Stocking, now a reporter at the Seattle Times. “His spirit made the place special.” 

Tresa Baldas, now a reporter at the Detroit Free Press, said, “In my first week on the job, I misspelled a Franklin city councilman's name three times, three different ways, in the same story. The next day, Mark took my article and posted it on the bulletin board, circled the mistakes in red ink, then wrote at the top: "THIS IS UNFORGIVEABLE!" I was mortified. But by the time I left the Monitor, he had helped turn me into a dogged reporter and storyteller who would continue to grow at major metro newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and Free Press.” 

In 2002, Mark was awarded a journalism fellowship with the Nieman Foundation, and the family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he spent an academic year at Harvard in the company of journalists from around the world.  

Upon his return to the Monitor, Mark progressed through a range of roles, including editor, circulation director, and ultimately director of product development. While serving in the latter role, Mark launched several new publications for the newspaper, including the Concord Insider, a weekly tabloid dedicated to hyperlocal news.  

In 2008, he took on a new role, as publisher of the Valley News, making the long drive from Canterbury to Lebanon for a year, until Leanna had finished middle school. The family then settled in Grantham for the next four years. 

While at the Valley News, Mark was diagnosed with leukemia, undergoing chemotherapy and ultimately a bone marrow transplant. He continued to serve as publisher of the Valley News until 2013, when he was named publisher of the Concord Monitor. Mark returned to the newspaper where he’d launched his journalism career more than 30 years before, and moved with Brenda back to Canterbury. 

A year later, Mark moved on from the world of daily newspapers – joining an Upper Valley-based tech startup aiming to bring local news into the digital age. Rob Gurwitt, a colleague of Mark’s at the DailyUV and now the publisher of an Upper Valley-based email newsletter called Daybreak, said the career move was positive for Mark. 

“At the Monitor, he’d had to participate first-hand in the tumult besetting local news as its revenue models eroded,” Gurwitt said. “It ravaged his spirit and his health, and the move to a no-name local tech startup was a chance, as he put it, to try to rebuild local news, not just oversee endless rounds of cutting.”

 Mark spent five years with the startup, later named HereCast, and moved on to the last role of his career in 2019, as a ghostwriter. At Scribe Media, he ghost-wrote nine books, including a wide-circulation account of the experiences of a Google marketing executive.  

Upon retirement in June of 2023, Mark dedicated himself to his family, to community service work, and to his writing. Mark and Brenda made weekly treks to Maynard, Massachusetts, to spend the day babysitting for Ben, now an engineer, and his wife, Liz. Being an “all-in” grandfather to Oliver, 4, and Annabelle, 2, meant getting down on the floor to play with blocks, going for slow walks and stopping every few feet to look at things, and even setting up a game camera in the backyard so the kids could learn about the wildlife outside. Mark also loved traveling to Boston and visiting with Leanna, now a doctor, and her partner, Ryan. 

Mark spent hours each week dedicated to supporting his town – serving as a member of the Canterbury Town History Book Committee and editing the town newsletter. He was an active member of the Canterbury United Community Church, a consistent volunteer at the annual Canterbury town fair, and a Canterbury cemetery keeper – even performing with gusto each fall as a town founding father come to life during the town’s October cemetery walks. Mark was the true Canterbury insider, seeming to know everyone, and getting together with various residents on a regular basis – to support each other’s writing, take walks, or drink whiskey. 

Over the course of his life, Mark wrote or co-authored three books that showcased his graceful writing, talent as a storyteller and love of history. “My Brave Boys,” published in 2001, was the first of his collaborations with former Monitor editor Mike Pride. It chronicled the Fifth New Hampshire Volunteers, the regiment of volunteers that suffered the highest rate of casualties during the Civil War, and its leader, Colonel Edward Cross. Mark and Mike spent eight years mining letters, diaries, memoirs, official records, and newspaper accounts for personal accounts of suffering and courage.  

The second is “Pliney Fiske,” a self-published Civil War mystery set shortly after the Civil War. About it, cinematographer Ken Burns wrote, “This is a wonderful novel, alive in the moment, from the first scene to the last. It rings true, too, free of the cloying sentimentality that afflicts most of our Civil War memories. I felt like I was there.” 

“In Union: a History of the Canterbury Shaker Village” was published in 2019. Mark wrote, “My goal in this project — as in all my books — is giving modern readers a genuine sense of connection with the people of the past and the times in which they lived, rendered as honestly and fully as I can.”  

He remained true to that spirit in his last, unfinished work, a chronicle of his own family. The Travises and, on his mother’s side, the Fairbanks, were among the first wave of Puritans in the 1630s. By poring over family records and deeds, tracking the families’ migration in New England, and visiting homesteads, Mark wrote frank and personal histories recounting the personal struggles, tragedies and perseverance of his ancestors. The manuscript is Mark’s gift and legacy for future generations. 

In 2019, when Mike’s health declined sharply, he asked Mark to write his obituary. Shortly before he died in 2023, he turned to Mark to handle the publication and final editing of “Northern Voices,” Mike’s memoir of his relationships with New England’s most prominent poets.  

A memorial service for Mark will take place Friday, November 22 at Canterbury United Community Church (5 Center Street, Canterbury) at 10 a.m. Calling hours will take place between 2:30-4:30 p.m. and 5:30-7:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 21 at the Canterbury Parish Hall (6 Hackleboro Road, Canterbury).

Donations can be made to the renovation project for the Canterbury Community Parish House. Checks should be made out to the CUCC with the memo line: IMO Mark Travis Parrish House CC Renovations. The Cremation Society of NH is assisting the family with arrangements. TO view an online memorial, leave a message of condolence, or for more information please visit www.csnh.com.