Craig Baggott, newspaper editor

Craig W. Baggott, who grew up in Ridgefield and became politics editor at The Hartford Courant, died suddenly of an apparent heart attack on Wednesday, June 9, 2004, in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 55 years old.
Mr. Baggott had worked for The Courant for 27 years. He had been in California since September while his wife, Barbara T. Roessner, a deputy managing editor at The Courant, studied at Stanford University on a fellowship. The family was planning to return to Connecticut later this month.
Mr. Baggott grew up Ridgefield. He was the son of Audrey and the late Thomas E. Baggott, who lived on Nod Road from 1950 and 1980 and operated Heritage Farms. He and his brothers used to work at the operation’s fruit and vegetable stands and also used to help farm the land. In the summer during the 1960s, the Baggott boys would make the rounds at about 4 a.m., picking up Ridgefield teens and taking them to work to pick corn. “It was a popular summer job,” said one former worker.
Mr. Baggott went to St. Mary’s School and Central Catholic High School in Norwalk, where he played football. He was a graduate of Western Connecticut State University.
In the 1970s, his friend, First Selectman Rudy Marconi, who sold paper to newspapers at the time, introduced Mr. Baggott to the publisher of weekly “pennysaver” in Southington, and the result was his first newspaper job. Mr. Baggott later worked for the Southingtown Observer and joined The Courant’s Southington and Bristol bureaus in 1977. He was named assistant metro editor in 1989 and politics and government editor in 1995.
“The readers have lost a brilliant and committed journalist,” said Courant Managing Editor Clifford L. Teutsch. “What we have lost is a tireless colleague and friend, a man of limitless goodwill and joie de vivre.”
The Courant said that friends and co-workers recalled Mr. Baggott as “a laid back and generous man, a devoted father and a practitioner of hard-hitting journalism in the press-as-watchdog tradition. As a reporter and editor, he dug into the confluence of political favoritism and public policy.”
While reporting on the 1994 gubernatorial race, The Courant said, Mr. Baggott investigated future Gov. John G. Rowland’s controversial private consulting work and a domestic incident with his first wife that culminated in a landmark freedom of information court case involving access to police records. As an editor, he supervised coverage of political investigative stories leading up to the current corruption scandals.
“His professional and personal lives became one stream,” Courant Editor Brian Toolan said. “It was like he was always on the case. He had such a ready sense about him — unflappable. He was one of the best newspapermen I’ve been around.”
“He was always had a comment about everything,” said Ridgefield writer Gerri Lewis, a longtime friend. “And his comments were always worth listening to.”
“He loved to challenge you,” said former Ridgefielder Laura Baggott, his first wife, who lives Edwards, Colo. “He always wanted you to look at things from another point of view. Craig loved to laugh and he would laugh so hard that his eyes would be just slits. I’ll always remember the time when we were all laughing and one of our friends said to Craig, ‘can you see out of those eyes?’”
Besides his wife and mother, Mr. Baggott is survived by four children, Lily, Kate, and Liam of West Hartford and Taylor, now living in Vermont; and three brothers, Tom, Peter and Brian. His oldest son, Craig, died of leukemia in 1999. Taylor and Craig were children of his first marriage.
Funeral arrangements were incomplete.
Donations in Mr. Baggott’s memory may be sent to Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., Attn: Heather Feldmann, 138 Neff Annex, Columbia, MO 65211. IRE is an organization devoted to training and developing investigative journalists.