Origin Stories: Grandpa Bud
Bud Sworden, WWII veteran
Veteran’s Day seems the right occasion to share a Kean Communications origin story about my Grandpa Bud. He was a WWII veteran who was building roads in rural Eastern Washington on December 7, 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. On December 8, he was in Spokane at the Army recruiting station. He wasn’t your typical recruit. In 1941 he was 39 years old. The Army made use of his skills, and he was engaged in building roads and airstrips in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany during the war.
He was born in Idaho and left school after completing 8th grade, which he explained was common in farming communities in the 1910s. He worked as a farmer, a fisherman, and in road construction. He was very humble about his war experience. He didn’t talk about it much. When he died, he left me a box of war mementos with small trinkets from his war years. Including a ring made by a German POW that he supervised in N. Africa. The ring was made from the metal a propeller of a down German aircraft and the POW had been a jeweler in civilian life.
I spent a lot of time with my Grandpa in my childhood. He was a quiet, steady, and warm presence. He was a voracious reader and loved history books, spy novels and westerns (Zane Grey was a favorite.) He always encouraged me, a fellow voracious reader, in my reading and emphasized thinking critically. Another item he left me was a first edition copy of “Out of Africa” - I loved the movie and he told me to read the book.
After the war he started his own business as a commercial fisherman. He was a great outdoorsman and loved hunting, camping, and clamming at the Oregon coast. He could fix most anything and woodworking was a hobby of his, as well as playing cards and pool. My grandparents had a pool table in their basement and he had a 1940s pin-up in the basement. He had a weekly poker game, too.
I wondered what his life would have been like if he had the opportunity and privilege of further education. He read widely and was very knowledgable. At his memorial service, one of his poker buddies said to me how proud grandpa was that I was attending school at University of Oregon. All these years later I still get a bit choked up about it because I always wanted to make him proud of me.