Meet Our Residents: Bud W.
“Howdy, Bud!” That simple greeting is enough to launch Bud Winters’ telling of his life beginning with his birth on his parents’ farm in Marion, Kansas in 1940. After completing his education through high school, he went with friends to the Army Reserve office and joined the National Guard in 1959, serving for six years.
Bud was united in marriage with his wife, Ethel, in 1960. They had attended Marion schools together and in addition to being a homemaker, Ethel also worked as a courthouse clerk. Bud and Ethel became proud parents of two daughters, Denise (living in Newton) and Sheryl (living in Wichita), and a grandson, Jimmy.
After his discharge from the National Guard, Bud began to broaden his work experience by employment with a Marion furniture store and route business for forty years with Frito Lay and briefly for the Bond Bread warehouse (Newton) until it closed as well as with a family plumbing business and a six-year stint with Pepsi-Cola. Bud retired from Frito Lay in the 1970s.
Bud and Ethel established residency in Newton and enjoyed traveling on his Honda Goldwing motorcycle for fifteen years until Ethel suffered a stroke requiring them to make the difficult decision to provide her with long-term nursing care (lasting sixteen years). Having sold their house, Bud moved to the Kansas Christian Home campus then accepted a friend’s offer to live in a rental property for a time only to move back to our campus where he enjoys participating in social activities, events, working part-time at Graber’s Ace Hardware, and the faith community at East Side United Methodist Church as well as the canine companionship of his five-year-old American Cocker Spaniel, Buddy.
