LNFBud

Richard "Bud" Bosworth and his twin sister Helen Bosworth were born in Winchester, Indiana, on April 27, 1918, to Tom and Ruby (Anderson) Bosworth. Bud spent his childhood years with his sister and their brother Edwin "Tib" Bosworth on the family's farm along SR 32 between Winchester and Farmland, and they attended the Lincoln Schools east of their home. Bud graduated from Lincoln High School in 1937.

After Bud finished high school, his father helped him get started farming. Bud planted a few acres of tomatoes and worked hard to have the cleanest, weed-free fields for miles around. Despite all his effort, his fields yielded fewer tomatoes than his neighbors got from theirs. The following year, Bud tended his fields more like everyone else did, and his yield appeared to be better, but due to his colorblindness, Bud couldn't tell how ripe the tomatoes were and harvested his crop too early. When his payment got docked because the tomatoes were too green, Bud decided it was time to go to town and look for a job. He started out as an apprentice polisher in 1939 at the Overmyer Mould Company.

About a year later, Bud married his sweetheart Irene Cox on December 14, 1940, at her parents' home near Winchester. They first lived in Farmland, then moved for a brief time to Toledo, OH, where Bud had been offered work. After a few months, they returned to Farmland where Irene worked as a beautician and Bud again worked in machine and mould shops around Winchester.

As WWII wore on, Bud enlisted in the US Navy in March of 1944. He spent several weeks at the Great Lakes Training Center before being transferred to San Diego, then deployed as a machinist aboard a ship in the Pacific fleet near Okinawa. While in the Navy, Bud formed friendships with fellow sailors and their families that would last the rest of his life, particularly the Allens and the Bests.

Bud returned to Indiana from the Navy in 1946, just after the stillbirth of his and Irene's first daughter Connie, and the Bosworths settled again in Farmland. Bud resumed working at Overmyer Mould Company's machine shop and moonlighted at McIntyre Furniture Company in Farmland. Their daughter Nicki was born in May 1948. In 1951, the Bosworths moved to a home in Winchester. Bud became a mouldmaker at Overmyer in 1959, and sometime thereafter moved to a job at the Anchor Hocking glass factory's mould shop. After several years there, Bud finished his machinist career at Armstrong Mould Company. Over the years, he also worked part time as needed at Maynard & Walker Funeral Home in Winchester.

After their 1951 move to Winchester, the Bosworths began attending Winchester Friends Church, and in October 1955 they transferred their memberships over from Farmland Friends. Bud and Irene sang in the choir, were active in the William Penn Sunday School class, and served on many committees through the years. They told the church in 1999 that they had together rededicated their lives to Christ while attending a 1979 John Wesley White evangelistic crusade at Winchester's fieldhouse. Bud was a trustee for many years and was a repository of knowledge about the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of the Winchester Friends meetinghouse and grounds. After his retirement, he and Irene made it part of their ministry to spend numerous hours mowing and trimming the lawns and maintaining the building.

Bud was a car enthusiast with special interest in Model A's and Volkswagens. For many years, he owned a Model A and was a member of the Model A Restorers Club. He enjoyed travel and spoke often of his trips with Irene to Texas and Florida to visit her sisters, and of their post-retirement trip to India to visit Irene's longtime pen pal there. Bud was also a longtime member of the Masonic Grand Lodge.

For many of their last years together, Bud and Irene lived in their well-kept home on CR 100S just south of Winchester. To lessen the burden of caring for property, they moved to a duplex apartment in the Summers Pointe retirement community in 2002 or 2003. Not long afterward, Irene's health declined significantly, and she died on July 3, 2004, after more than 63 years of marriage to Bud. Bud continued as a resident in Summers Pointe apartments and the assisted living center for the remainder of his life.

In his final years, Bud was a frequent patient at Winchester's Saint Vincent Randolph Hospital for treatment of his chronic congestive heart failure. He was such a friend and favorite of the nursing staff that SVR invited him to be photographed with them for a 2006 billboard promoting the hospital's services. He died at age 89 at SVR Hospital early on the morning of November 10, 2007, after several days of treatment there for his chronic cardiac and respiratory problems. He was preceded in death by his parents, his sister Helen Wolford, his brother Edwin, his infant daughter Connie in 1946, and his wife Irene in 2004. He is survived by his daughter Nicki Owens and her husband Rick; by his granddaughter Angela Longnecker and his grandson Scott Longnecker; by several nieces and nephews; and by many friends in the community and in his church family who will miss him deeply.

Bud and Irene Bosworth were some of the first people we got to know very well in Winchester when we moved here in 1998, mostly because they were always around the meetinghouse mowing the lawn or fixing something. After finishing their task, they often invited us to walk down the street to have coffee at the soda fountain in Haines Drug Store. We soon figured out that Bud was one of those special, delightful, one-of-a-kind friends we all learn to treasure.

Who else have we ever known who referred to at least three-fourths of all his acquaintances as "a dandy"? (Whenever Bud said that, I always thought I should reply with the old junior high comeback, "Takes one to know one.") It is unlikely that we'll ever hear anyone refer to people they're speaking of as "that jaybird" the way Bud always did, or that we'll ever know anyone who delighted so much in strange combinations of food the way Bud did. He seemed to enjoy gravy and baked beans on just about anything, and he made sandwiches from whatever happened to be in the refrigerator. The church choir's practices haven't been quite the same without Bud there to ask the obvious "Is this the song for next Sunday?" It is unlikely we'll ever know another 89 year-old so ready for mischief and practical jokes, so lovingly ornery, so ready for a good laugh even when he felt unwell.

Unless he was very, very ill, Bud even in a hospital bed nearly always had that sparkle in his eye that told you he was calculating how to make his visitors laugh. The sparkle was there when we last saw Bud at the hospital late on the Wednesday before he died, and his daughter Nicki said she saw it too when she visited him there on Friday night. That is why we all were so shocked to learn on Saturday morning that Bud's condition had deteriorated so rapidly, and that he was gone. After being notified of Bud's death, and thinking about that "sparkle of life" we always counted on seeing in his eye, my mind was drawn to the apostle Paul's words in I Corinthians 15:51-52, that "we will all be changed -- in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet...."

In speaking with Nicki in preparation for this occasion, we pondered what it was exactly that produced a character like Bud. She told me she thought that the most lifechanging, significant influence on her dad had been the two years he spent in the US Navy. That experience gave him close, lifelong friends, enhanced his job skills, and taught him habits of orderliness and a unique way of seeing nearly everything in life. I too saw that influence in Bud's life, but I believe that an even more profound factor in producing the character we knew as Bud was the long-term transformation of his life resulting from walking with God, especially since the moment he and Irene made the decision to rededicate themselves to Christ at a 1979 John Wesley White crusade. It was a spiritual process of grace and growth that began "in the twinkling of an eye" and continued right up to the end of the earthly portion of Bud's life.

1) Through Bud's spiritual life, Christ enabled friendship to become rich spiritual community. Bud's relationships with his fellow Christians grew beyond earthly friendship to investment and stakeholding in their spiritual wellbeing. He cared deeply for others in the church and was as close as a brother to his Sunday School class and its card-playing fellowship group, and to the Friends who faithfully took him to coffee several times a week. Others no doubt saw that as breakfast; I believe Bud considered it communion. Bud would usually do whatever he could to help people; some saw that as citizenship, but Bud grew to consider it to be ministry.

2) For Bud, mere fun was transformed into joy, the delight in life that originates in Christ's presence and love and is not quenched by life's hardships. I never observed Bud's practical jokes to be harmful, harsh, or at anyone else's expense. Even when his health was failing, Bud looked for ways to lighten the atmosphere and get others to laugh. Despite his profound sorrow over Irene's death, Bud made the conscious decision to allow joy to resurface in his life and to keep on living vitally and being his best, mischievous, quick-to-chuckle self.

3) Christ transformed Bud's chivalrous decency into committed discipleship, something that was especially seen in his relationship with Irene. Because of her long struggle with diabetes, Bud had to work extra hard to help her and care for her. I never heard Bud complain about any of that. To the contrary, he spoke of his marriage only in the language of privilege, devotion, and spiritual submission. For Pam, Bud's sacrificial love for Irene was illustrated by things like his insistence on pre-warming her towel in the clothes dryer while she showered. After Irene died, Bud transferred his ministry of spiritual kindness to others in the assisted living center, including Irene's sister Louise and his friend Joe Zell's wife Rosa Mary after Joe had to move to a nursing home.

4) Bud's natural helpfulness and good works for people and institutions were transformed by Christ into genuine spiritual acts of service done for God. His extensive volunteer work as a church trustee, whether mowing or plumbing or painting, was done for the Lord, not just for people, setting an example for upcoming generations and thus having eternal impact and significance beyond merely helping the church to get needed work done.

5) Christ transformed Bud's human appreciation into spiritual gratitude and thankfulness. He found a way to obey Paul's instruction to "be thankful in everything." During his final hospital stay, Bud was describing one of his meals for us and went on and on about how tasty the biscuits had been, even though he acknowledged that they were "as hard as hockey pucks, so hard they hurt my teeth!" Bud's insistence on describing people as "dandies" was his way of expressing recognition and gratitude for God's presence brought into his life through them. As we left his hospital room that Wednesday evening, the last thing Bud ever said to us was, "Thank you for coming to see me," spoken so sincerely that it told us that Bud knew we were there out of love and ministry, not out of duty.

And then, in the twinkling of an eye on Saturday morning, Bud's transformation into Christlikeness was completed. In that instant, he was changed from a Kingdom traveler sailing through life's storms, into a Kingdom resident in the safe harbor of God's immediate, eternal presence. According to the medical caregivers who were with Bud in that moment of eternal transformation, he was reciting either the Lord's Prayer or the 23rd Psalm, not the Navy Hymn. Bud's two years in the Navy did indeed significantly shape and change his earthly existence, but it was Christ who transformed Bud Bosworth and gave him eternal life.



Bud and friend, Nita Burton during Easter morning fellowship 2006	Billboard Bud 2006

Bud with friend Cleo McFarland watching balloons launched at Friendship Sunday Sept. 2005	Bud with friends from the William Penn Sunday School Class. Bud and Irene were members of the class for many years.
Richard Anderson "Bud" Bosworth April 27, 1918 - November 10, 2007 Richard "Bud" Bosworth and his twin sister Helen Bosworth were born in Winchester, Indiana, on April 27, 1918, to Tom and Ruby (Anderson) Bosworth. Bud spent his childhood years with his sister and their brother Edwin "Tib" Bosworth on the family's farm along SR 32 between Winchester and Farmland, and they attended the Lincoln Schools east of their home. Bud graduated from Lincoln High School in 1937. After Bud finished high school, his father helped him get started farming. Bud planted a few acres of tomatoes and worked hard to have the cleanest, weed-free fields for miles around. Despite all his effort, his fields yielded fewer tomatoes than his neighbors got from theirs. The following year, Bud tended his fields more like everyone else did, and his yield appeared to be better, but due to his colorblindness, Bud couldn't tell how ripe the tomatoes were and harvested his crop too early. When his payment got docked because the tomatoes were too green, Bud decided it was time to go to town and look for a job. He started out as an apprentice polisher in 1939 at the Overmyer Mould Company. About a year later, Bud married his sweetheart Irene Cox on December 14, 1940, at her parents' home near Winchester. They first lived in Farmland, then moved for a brief time to Toledo, OH, where Bud had been offered work. After a few months, they returned to Farmland where Irene worked as a beautician and Bud again worked in machine and mould shops around Winchester. As WWII wore on, Bud enlisted in the US Navy in March of 1944. He spent several weeks at the Great Lakes Training Center before being transferred to San Diego, then deployed as a machinist aboard a ship in the Pacific fleet near Okinawa. While in the Navy, Bud formed friendships with fellow sailors and their families that would last the rest of his life, particularly the Allens and the Bests. Bud returned to Indiana from the Navy in 1946, just after the stillbirth of his and Irene's first daughter Connie, and the Bosworths settled again in Farmland. Bud resumed working at Overmyer Mould Company's machine shop and moonlighted at McIntyre Furniture Company in Farmland. Their daughter Nicki was born in May 1948. In 1951, the Bosworths moved to a home in Winchester. Bud became a mouldmaker at Overmyer in 1959, and sometime thereafter moved to a job at the Anchor Hocking glass factory's mould shop. After several years there, Bud finished his machinist career at Armstrong Mould Company. Over the years, he also worked part time as needed at Maynard & Walker Funeral Home in Winchester. After their 1951 move to Winchester, the Bosworths began attending Winchester Friends Church, and in October 1955 they transferred their memberships over from Farmland Friends. Bud and Irene sang in the choir, were active in the William Penn Sunday School class, and served on many committees through the years. They told the church in 1999 that they had together rededicated their lives to Christ while attending a 1979 John Wesley White evangelistic crusade at Winchester's fieldhouse. Bud was a trustee for many years and was a repository of knowledge about the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of the Winchester Friends meetinghouse and grounds. After his retirement, he and Irene made it part of their ministry to spend numerous hours mowing and trimming the lawns and maintaining the building. Bud was a car enthusiast with special interest in Model A's and Volkswagens. For many years, he owned a Model A and was a member of the Model A Restorers Club. He enjoyed travel and spoke often of his trips with Irene to Texas and Florida to visit her sisters, and of their post-retirement trip to India to visit Irene's longtime pen pal there. Bud was also a longtime member of the Masonic Grand Lodge. For many of their last years together, Bud and Irene lived in their well-kept home on CR 100S just south of Winchester. To lessen the burden of caring for property, they moved to a duplex apartment in the Summers Pointe retirement community in 2002 or 2003. Not long afterward, Irene's health declined significantly, and she died on July 3, 2004, after more than 63 years of marriage to Bud. Bud continued as a resident in Summers Pointe apartments and the assisted living center for the remainder of his life. In his final years, Bud was a frequent patient at Winchester's Saint Vincent Randolph Hospital for treatment of his chronic congestive heart failure. He was such a friend and favorite of the nursing staff that SVR invited him to be photographed with them for a 2006 billboard promoting the hospital's services. He died at age 89 at SVR Hospital early on the morning of November 10, 2007, after several days of treatment there for his chronic cardiac and respiratory problems. He was preceded in death by his parents, his sister Helen Wolford, his brother Edwin, his infant daughter Connie in 1946, and his wife Irene in 2004. He is survived by his daughter Nicki Owens and her husband Rick; by his granddaughter Angela Longnecker and his grandson Scott Longnecker; by several nieces and nephews; and by many friends in the community and in his church family who will miss him deeply. Message Given at the Funeral of Bud Bosworth Winchester Friends Church November 14, 2007 Bud and Irene Bosworth were some of the first people we got to know very well in Winchester when we moved here in 1998, mostly because they were always around the meetinghouse mowing the lawn or fixing something. After finishing their task, they often invited us to walk down the street to have coffee at the soda fountain in Haines Drug Store. We soon figured out that Bud was one of those special, delightful, one-of-a-kind friends we all learn to treasure. Who else have we ever known who referred to at least three-fourths of all his acquaintances as "a dandy"? (Whenever Bud said that, I always thought I should reply with the old junior high comeback, "Takes one to know one.") It is unlikely that we'll ever hear anyone refer to people they're speaking of as "that jaybird" the way Bud always did, or that we'll ever know anyone who delighted so much in strange combinations of food the way Bud did. He seemed to enjoy gravy and baked beans on just about anything, and he made sandwiches from whatever happened to be in the refrigerator. The church choir's practices haven't been quite the same without Bud there to ask the obvious "Is this the song for next Sunday?" It is unlikely we'll ever know another 89 year-old so ready for mischief and practical jokes, so lovingly ornery, so ready for a good laugh even when he felt unwell. Unless he was very, very ill, Bud even in a hospital bed nearly always had that sparkle in his eye that told you he was calculating how to make his visitors laugh. The sparkle was there when we last saw Bud at the hospital late on the Wednesday before he died, and his daughter Nicki said she saw it too when she visited him there on Friday night. That is why we all were so shocked to learn on Saturday morning that Bud's condition had deteriorated so rapidly, and that he was gone. After being notified of Bud's death, and thinking about that "sparkle of life" we always counted on seeing in his eye, my mind was drawn to the apostle Paul's words in I Corinthians 15:51-52, that "we will all be changed -- in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet...." In speaking with Nicki in preparation for this occasion, we pondered what it was exactly that produced a character like Bud. She told me she thought that the most lifechanging, significant influence on her dad had been the two years he spent in the US Navy. That experience gave him close, lifelong friends, enhanced his job skills, and taught him habits of orderliness and a unique way of seeing nearly everything in life. I too saw that influence in Bud's life, but I believe that an even more profound factor in producing the character we knew as Bud was the long-term transformation of his life resulting from walking with God, especially since the moment he and Irene made the decision to rededicate themselves to Christ at a 1979 John Wesley White crusade. It was a spiritual process of grace and growth that began "in the twinkling of an eye" and continued right up to the end of the earthly portion of Bud's life. Bud was already "a dandy" himself, but in multiple ways, Christ's work steadily transformed the merely good into the godly: 1) Through Bud's spiritual life, Christ enabled friendship to become rich spiritual community. Bud's relationships with his fellow Christians grew beyond earthly friendship to investment and stakeholding in their spiritual wellbeing. He cared deeply for others in the church and was as close as a brother to his Sunday School class and its card-playing fellowship group, and to the Friends who faithfully took him to coffee several times a week. Others no doubt saw that as breakfast; I believe Bud considered it communion. Bud would usually do whatever he could to help people; some saw that as citizenship, but Bud grew to consider it to be ministry. 2) For Bud, mere fun was transformed into joy, the delight in life that originates in Christ's presence and love and is not quenched by life's hardships. I never observed Bud's practical jokes to be harmful, harsh, or at anyone else's expense. Even when his health was failing, Bud looked for ways to lighten the atmosphere and get others to laugh. Despite his profound sorrow over Irene's death, Bud made the conscious decision to allow joy to resurface in his life and to keep on living vitally and being his best, mischievous, quick-to-chuckle self. 3) Christ transformed Bud's chivalrous decency into committed discipleship, something that was especially seen in his relationship with Irene. Because of her long struggle with diabetes, Bud had to work extra hard to help her and care for her. I never heard Bud complain about any of that. To the contrary, he spoke of his marriage only in the language of privilege, devotion, and spiritual submission. For Pam, Bud's sacrificial love for Irene was illustrated by things like his insistence on pre-warming her towel in the clothes dryer while she showered. After Irene died, Bud transferred his ministry of spiritual kindness to others in the assisted living center, including Irene's sister Louise and his friend Joe Zell's wife Rosa Mary after Joe had to move to a nursing home. 4) Bud's natural helpfulness and good works for people and institutions were transformed by Christ into genuine spiritual acts of service done for God. His extensive volunteer work as a church trustee, whether mowing or plumbing or painting, was done for the Lord, not just for people, setting an example for upcoming generations and thus having eternal impact and significance beyond merely helping the church to get needed work done. 5) Christ transformed Bud's human appreciation into spiritual gratitude and thankfulness. He found a way to obey Paul's instruction to "be thankful in everything." During his final hospital stay, Bud was describing one of his meals for us and went on and on about how tasty the biscuits had been, even though he acknowledged that they were "as hard as hockey pucks, so hard they hurt my teeth!" Bud's insistence on describing people as "dandies" was his way of expressing recognition and gratitude for God's presence brought into his life through them. As we left his hospital room that Wednesday evening, the last thing Bud ever said to us was, "Thank you for coming to see me," spoken so sincerely that it told us that Bud knew we were there out of love and ministry, not out of duty. And then, in the twinkling of an eye on Saturday morning, Bud's transformation into Christlikeness was completed. In that instant, he was changed from a Kingdom traveler sailing through life's storms, into a Kingdom resident in the safe harbor of God's immediate, eternal presence. According to the medical caregivers who were with Bud in that moment of eternal transformation, he was reciting either the Lord's Prayer or the 23rd Psalm, not the Navy Hymn. Bud's two years in the Navy did indeed significantly shape and change his earthly existence, but it was Christ who transformed Bud Bosworth and gave him eternal life. Ron Ferguson, November 2007