Week 15: Elder Voices -- Naumann

My Uncle Bud
By Jesse Naumann
Richmond Elementary School, Grade 5

I interviewed a family friend who we call Uncle Bud. He is 72 years old. He was born and lived his first 20 years in Saint Albans Vermont. His most memorable experience happened in Burlington Vermont in March when he was 24 years old. He was in College. He didn’t live in a dorm but had an apartment in Burlington.

One day in March on a dark rainy day he went to get some bread at a small store two blocks away from his apartment. He walked in the store and there was a guy trying to rob the owner. The owner was an older woman who was almost 80. When he walked in the store the lady started yelling, and the man tried to run away. Uncle Bud didn’t know what was going on but that the lady needed help so he tackled the guy. When Bud was tackling the bad guy they rolled out the door, and the bad guy shot Uncle Bud in his lower stomach.

The lady locked the door. The bad guy ran away. Uncle Bud was out in the rain with a bullet in his stomach pounding on the door! The woman would not unlock it! He was scared because he didn’t know how bad he was shot and he needed help! The lady’s daughter called the police and Uncle Bud went to the hospital. He had an operation to get the bullet out. Luckily the bullet didn’t hit anything important. After the operation, he met a student nurse named Claire. A few weeks later a friend who was a nursing student called Uncle Bud and asked him to go to a dance with the nursing student Claire! After that they got married!

After this experience Uncle Bud said he was much more careful when he went places. But the experience was good because he met Claire and got married. What he said he learned from this was that things that seem bad can turn out good! In the end nothing bad came out of the experience.

This is the poem I wrote about Uncle Bud:

Brave and Grave
Bud is brave, but what happened was grave.
He tried to do right, but he had a fight.
He heard a shot and then he was caught
Out in the rain alone.

He thought it would turn out bad,
But in the end he was glad.
He was married to Claire,
And they became a pair.

Bud is kind,
And in the end was able to find,
What he really wanted:
a good wife, to be a dad,
and to find ways to be glad.