Merlyn “Bud” Lea, who for more than 55 years covered the Green Bay Packers for the Milwaukee Sentinel and Packer Plus, died Wednesday, Jan. 20. He was 92.
Born in 1928, Lea was a Green Bay native and graduate of the city’s West High School. He went on to attend UW-Madison, where he worked as sports editor for The Daily Cardinal student newspaper.
Following graduation, Lea started his professional career with a short stint at the Post-Bulletin in Rochester, Minn. He returned to Wisconsin in 1953, joining the Milwaukee Sentinel sports department.
Lea met his wife, Filomena Volpintesta, while working at the Sentinel. She was a staff writer for the newspaper in the 1950s, where she wrote under the name Filomena Phillips, due to column-size constraints in the Sentinel. They married in 1957 and had two sons, Dean and Perry.
After one year on the job, Lea became the Packers beat writer for the Sentinel. He held the role for nearly two decades before being named sports editor in 1972. He also served as the newspaper’s sports columnist and continued to write columns about the Packers through his 1995 retirement from full-time work. He went on to serve as columnist for another 11 years for Packers Plus, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel‘s weekly Packers tabloid.
Lea was inducted into the Milwaukee Press Club’s Media Hall of Fame in 2004, and had an award named for him by the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame. Prior to postponement of the 2020 Hall of Fame banquet, he was scheduled to be the first recipient of the Bud Lea Media Award, which will be presented annually.
Funeral services for Lea are pending.
