Beau Cutts was a journalist for 40 years, but he’d been an adventurer all his life. He found a way to somehow meld his job and his hobby, and take complete strangers along for the ride.
Cutts snorkeled with humpbacked whales, enjoyed skydiving and hang-gliding excursions and sailed around the world. And after it was all over, he chronicled the experience.
“He liked to do things that people would maybe dream about doing and then write about them,” said his former wife, Carol Cutts. “He was so able to reach the average reader in the way he presented his stories. In his later years, when he was sick, he said how grateful he was to have had those adventures.”
Over the years, complications of diabetes slowed him down, Cutts said of her former husband. Though the couple divorced in 1998 after 33 years of marriage, Cutts moved back in with his former wife more than a decade ago.
“We would have hit 50 years next year,” she said of their union. “But we had two beautiful children together and we remained close.”
His last big adventure was Labor Day weekend. Cutts, along with his son and namesake, Robert “Rob” Cutts Jr., his grandson, and other family members, took a turn around Lake Lanier in his sailboat, a 25-foot C&C sloop.
“I think he played captain that day,” Carol Cutts said tearfully.
Robert Warren Cutts Sr., known as Beau by all, of Flowery Branch, died Sept. 11 from complications of diabetes and cardiac issues. He was 66.
His body was cremated by Flanigan Funeral Home and Crematory, Buford. A memorial gathering is planned for 7 p.m. Monday, which would have been his 67th birthday, at Manuel’s Tavern.
Athens-born, Cutts decided to study journalism at Georgia State University, his former wife said. He graduated in the late ’60s, but before he finished school, he began his journalism career at the Marietta Daily Journal. He left the Marietta paper to join The Atlanta Constitution, where he worked until the late ‘80s, Carol Cutts said.
Cutts won several awards during his career as a writer, including being named best poet in 2006 at the Georgia Author of the Year awards. The award came after the release of his independently published book, “Night Is a Rare Place And Other Poems.”
Cutts’ career as a journalist allowed him to share his adventures, his son said.
“I know he enjoyed being able to do them both as the same time” Rob Cutts said, of the marriage between his father’s hobby and career.
“It was a good relationship,” Carol Cutts added. “And the paper was generous to let him do it.”
Cutts is also survived by his daughter, Karen Cutts Copeland of Chattanooga, Tenn.; brother, William Gibson Cutts Jr. of Canton; sister, Pamela Pursley of Brookneal, Va.; and one grandson.
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