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Eulogy.

It's hard to put a life into 500 words. Bud was a good man. I am glad he is at rest. This is what I said at his funeral:

Hi, I’m Jim. Bud was my step dad, but more importantly he was my friend.

            Many of the people here knew Bud from very different times in his life.  To live to 92 is a good ride and you collect a lot of people over that time and Bud loved people. Bud was the quintessential Seattle native; the grandchild of Swedish immigrants raised a block North of Green Lake, a graduate of Lincoln HS and the University of Washington. Bud was the only child of Len and Em Anderson. His dad, Leonard or Len as we called him was a milkman, a semi-pro baseball catcher and a real character; hard as nails one minute and laughing the next.  Bud’s mom Emma, was ahead of her times, a shrewd and ambitious businesswoman who was also sweet and funny. They lived on Densmore Ave, and Bud had what sounded like a nice childhood, featuring lots of sports and friends, travel and relatives. Bud loved to sing. It’s very appropriate that we are here in the choir room. He would have liked that.

             Bud had a lot of stories to tell. For a man who was an only child, Bud had an endless supply of cousins and relatives. Bud, like many people of his generation knew how to talk to people and made friends wherever he went. He found things in common with people he met: families, jobs, backgrounds.  I used to joke with Bud that we could parachute him into the most inaccessible Amazon jungle and he would walk out two weeks later with two cousins, somebody from his Naval ROTC, and a kid he coached in football.

            Bud served in the Navy during WW2. He married and had two sons Rick and Steve. He had a successful business. He traveled around the world.

            Bud once told me that his favorite achievement in life was his role in the construction of the University Presbyterian Church in 1952, where as a young parishioner, he was asked to oversee their new construction as general contractor.  He went at that task with everything he had. If you wanted to listen he would tell you at length about the cement used in the rectory, or the specs of the windows they installed. He would glow while he talked about it. Building that church was very special to him

            Bud came into our lives after we had lost our dad, Ned Sander. Bud and Ned were friends. I remember that Dad had me call Bud “Uncle Bud” when I was very young, the only person I ever called uncle who wasn’t actually my uncle. I guess that is some kind of achievement right there. When Dad died in 1972, Bud was in California, on some kind of retreat, and heard about it on a pay phone. Many years later Bud told me, standing there in that phone booth he imagined my Dad walking off over a hill. I had almost forgotten that until that week we spent at Evergreen hospice with Bud. Over those few days I could see Bud getting ready to walk over the same hill.

            I won’t lie to you; when Bud and my mom got married. I didn’t like him much. My mom could have married anyone for that matter and I already had made my mind up that I wasn’t going to like him.  Bud tried very hard. He tried to get me to accept him. We went on trips. He was my baseball coach; he tried to “relate” to me in the most 1970’s meaning of that word. I generally I used up most of my teenaged distain on him. He never gave up, though I am sure he was discouraged. Over the years my anger and know it all attitude very slowly gave way, and we began to be friends. He wasn’t my Dad; he was my Bud. I was lucky, because we didn’t have the normal father son baggage, we could have a really interesting friendship. I learned that he was a really special and wonderful man.

            Bud was at heart, an engineer. He liked to get his hands on things.  Like his 1931 Ford Model A coupe: a project he started in the mid seventies as something he and I could bond over.  All I remember him teaching me was how to grind rust off of metal. That’s what I remember most but in the end, when he was finished with it, it was something beautiful, built from parts found in barns and scrap heaps, and in want ads in the Times. It was a car built from basically scratch, over almost twenty years. So much so that he confused the State Patrol when he went to license it because it wasn’t actually a car- it was a collection of parts that he had lovingly pieced together into an amazing thing. I will always remember his smile behind the wheel of that car.

            Bud also loved football. He coached youth football in the 1950’s and that experience never left him. Once a coach, always a coach. While he lived to see the Seahawks win the superbowl, Bud specifically loved Husky football. He was a season ticket holder most of his life. When it got too difficult for him to go to the games, Bud would watch from home with the telephone in his lap so he could call his buddy Walt Harrison to discuss the finer points of the game or pick apart the defense. If you accidentally called during a Husky game he would invariably think it was Walt Harrison and answer, “ Hey Walt did see that play?”

            Some of you may have heard Bud tell the story of the first time he died. In 2004, when Bud was 82 he had heart surgery, his second round of open heart. The doctors, specifically his surgeon, did not give him much hope. On the day of the surgery my family gathered at Overlake Hospital and waited to hear the outcome. The doctor came out in his scrubs, straight out of a movie script he told us that they had done all they could and it looked grim: he didn’t expect him to survive. We all went home thinking it was Bud’s last day. Bud wasn’t having any of that. It was a hard slog but he pulled through and a week later he was talking.  I asked him what he remembered of his surgery.

            “Oh, I was dead. I was gone.”

            “Really. What was that like?” I asked him

            “Oh, it was a bright light and a fellow was there and I talked to him”

            “Well what did you say?”

            “I said thanks a lot but I couldn’t go. I had people to take care of. People depended on me.”

            So Bud negotiated his way out of dying in 2004. He loved to negotiate. I am surprised he didn’t get St. Peter’s watch and sandals in the deal.

            In his time in hospice, Bud wasn’t lucid but seemed to be very intently talking with someone for a while. He would fade in and out, on the first night and occasionally he was clear and communicating with me. I told him that it sounded like he was negotiating with some one. He said yes he was. I asked if he was getting terms that he liked. He said “ yep. I can live with it”.

            Bud knew great success and sadly some failure too. In business and in his personal life there were highs and lows. He was not perfect. He made mistakes; he tried hard but fell short at times. He worked at being optimistic and valiantly tried to stay positive in the face of tough times and difficult personal challenges. It didn’t always work. He had his share of disappointment.  He did have his joys though. He enjoyed lifelong friendships, he loved my mom. He loved his grandchildren, Dave, Katie, Tori, Melissa, Ned and Tom.  His cup was full.

             So I guess he got the deal he was looking for. Bud’s not gone he just got the deal he could live with.