Bud Leroy Durbin, 82, of Fort Smith left us broken on Wednesday, October 28, 2015.
He was born the son of a coal miner in Paris, Arkansas on August 18, 1933 and graduated from Hackett, Arkansas in 1952.
He met and married Vera Mae Cousins in 1953, and then joined the Navy during the Korean conflict only to be shipped to the Antarctic for Operation Deepfreeze.
The GI Bill allowed him to attend Poteau Community College, now known as Carl Albert State College, where he graduated with an associate degree in diesel engine repair in 1959. As his two kids were growing up, Bud became known to certain wayward children in the neighborhood as “Pop”, and Vera conversely was known as “Mom”. He taught these kids how to fix their motorcycles, clean their guns, how to play cards, hunt, and fish. This moniker remains the name many people in the motorcycle racing community and several other circles still know him as.
He was a watcher of birds, a teacher of young men, a fixer of everything from bicycles to Kenworth’s, and a traveler of the world via Uncle Sam and Admiral Richard E. Byrd. He loved telling stories, hunting, John Wayne, steak, old movies, animals, laughing, fishing, and his family.
He always wanted a degree in teaching because he was afraid some mechanical accident may affect his ability to manipulate engines. This fear never came to fruition during his long career of working on everything from small engines to big rigs. Fortunately, he could not help himself and espoused the role of teacher to anyone who was interested in attaining knowledge. Teaching may not have been his profession, but it was something he could not avoid.
He often told stories ending with humor at the narrator’s expense. He understood a real story was more believable when the teller of the tale could laugh at himself, and that believability would also get a harder laugh out of others. Pop, whose stories often portrayed himself as innocent, was respected as anything but naïve. Like a character out of the movies he loved, he was a hero to many and personified the term patriarch to many who were lucky enough to know him. Goodbye, Bud Durbin, Pepaw, Dad, Son, and Pop. You were all things to us.
He is preceded in death by his father, Bud Durbin, his mother, Marie Durbin, and his sister, Patsy Warwick.
He is survived by his wife of sixty two years, Vera Durbin, a sister, Georgia Gill, a daughter, Diana Lee and her husband Don of Van Buren, a son, Roy Durbin and wife Danielle of Greenwood and four grandchildren, Dusty Lee, Travis Lee, Katlyn Best, and Lilly Durbin.
Services will be at 10:00 A.M. Friday, October 30, 2015 at Ocker Memorial Chapel in Van Buren with interment at US National Cemetery in Fort Smith with military honors, under the direction of Ocker Funeral Home in Van Buren.
Pallbearers will be Kevin Arnold, Allen Fuller, PeeWee Parsons, Johnny Mobley, Levi Best, and Don Lee.
He was born the son of a coal miner in Paris, Arkansas on August 18, 1933 and graduated from Hackett, Arkansas in 1952.
He met and married Vera Mae Cousins in 1953, and then joined the Navy during the Korean conflict only to be shipped to the Antarctic for Operation Deepfreeze.
The GI Bill allowed him to attend Poteau Community College, now known as Carl Albert State College, where he graduated with an associate degree in diesel engine repair in 1959. As his two kids were growing up, Bud became known to certain wayward children in the neighborhood as “Pop”, and Vera conversely was known as “Mom”. He taught these kids how to fix their motorcycles, clean their guns, how to play cards, hunt, and fish. This moniker remains the name many people in the motorcycle racing community and several other circles still know him as.
He was a watcher of birds, a teacher of young men, a fixer of everything from bicycles to Kenworth’s, and a traveler of the world via Uncle Sam and Admiral Richard E. Byrd. He loved telling stories, hunting, John Wayne, steak, old movies, animals, laughing, fishing, and his family.
He always wanted a degree in teaching because he was afraid some mechanical accident may affect his ability to manipulate engines. This fear never came to fruition during his long career of working on everything from small engines to big rigs. Fortunately, he could not help himself and espoused the role of teacher to anyone who was interested in attaining knowledge. Teaching may not have been his profession, but it was something he could not avoid.
He often told stories ending with humor at the narrator’s expense. He understood a real story was more believable when the teller of the tale could laugh at himself, and that believability would also get a harder laugh out of others. Pop, whose stories often portrayed himself as innocent, was respected as anything but naïve. Like a character out of the movies he loved, he was a hero to many and personified the term patriarch to many who were lucky enough to know him. Goodbye, Bud Durbin, Pepaw, Dad, Son, and Pop. You were all things to us.
He is preceded in death by his father, Bud Durbin, his mother, Marie Durbin, and his sister, Patsy Warwick.
He is survived by his wife of sixty two years, Vera Durbin, a sister, Georgia Gill, a daughter, Diana Lee and her husband Don of Van Buren, a son, Roy Durbin and wife Danielle of Greenwood and four grandchildren, Dusty Lee, Travis Lee, Katlyn Best, and Lilly Durbin.
Services will be at 10:00 A.M. Friday, October 30, 2015 at Ocker Memorial Chapel in Van Buren with interment at US National Cemetery in Fort Smith with military honors, under the direction of Ocker Funeral Home in Van Buren.
Pallbearers will be Kevin Arnold, Allen Fuller, PeeWee Parsons, Johnny Mobley, Levi Best, and Don Lee.
Bud Leroy Durbin, 82, of Fort Smith left us broken on Wednesday, October 28, 2015.
He was born the son of a coal miner in Paris, Arkansas on August 18, 1933 and graduated from Hackett, Arkansas in 1952.
He met and married Vera Mae Cousins in 1953, and then joined the Navy during the Korean conflict only to be shipped to the Antarctic for Operation Deepfreeze.
The GI Bill allowed him to attend Poteau Community College, now known as Carl Albert State College, where he graduated with an associate degree in diesel engine repair in 1959. As his two kids were growing up, Bud became known to certain wayward children in the neighborhood as “Pop”, and Vera conversely was known as “Mom”. He taught these kids how to fix their motorcycles, clean their guns, how to play cards, hunt, and fish. This moniker remains the name many people in the motorcycle racing community and several other circles still know him as.
He was a watcher of birds, a teacher of young men, a fixer of everything from bicycles to Kenworth’s, and a traveler of the world via Uncle Sam and Admiral Richard E. Byrd. He loved telling stories, hunting, John Wayne, steak, old movies, animals, laughing, fishing, and his family.
He always wanted a degree in teaching because he was afraid some mechanical accident may affect his ability to manipulate engines. This fear never came to fruition during his long career of working on everything from small engines to big rigs. Fortunately, he could not help himself and espoused the role of teacher to anyone who was interested in attaining knowledge. Teaching may not have been his profession, but it was something he could not avoid.
He often told stories ending with humor at the narrator’s expense. He understood a real story was more believable when the teller of the tale could laugh at himself, and that believability would also get a harder laugh out of others. Pop, whose stories often portrayed himself as innocent, was respected as anything but naïve. Like a character out of the movies he loved, he was a hero to many and personified the term patriarch to many who were lucky enough to know him. Goodbye, Bud Durbin, Pepaw, Dad, Son, and Pop. You were all things to us.
He is preceded in death by his father, Bud Durbin, his mother, Marie Durbin, and his sister, Patsy Warwick.
He is survived by his wife of sixty two years, Vera Durbin, a sister, Georgia Gill, a daughter, Diana Lee and her husband Don of Van Buren, a son, Roy Durbin and wife Danielle of Greenwood and four grandchildren, Dusty Lee, Travis Lee, Katlyn Best, and Lilly Durbin.
Services will be at 10:00 A.M. Friday, October 30, 2015 at Ocker Memorial Chapel in Van Buren with interment at US National Cemetery in Fort Smith with military honors, under the direction of Ocker Funeral Home in Van Buren.
Pallbearers will be Kevin Arnold, Allen Fuller, PeeWee Parsons, Johnny Mobley, Levi Best, and Don Lee.
He was born the son of a coal miner in Paris, Arkansas on August 18, 1933 and graduated from Hackett, Arkansas in 1952.
He met and married Vera Mae Cousins in 1953, and then joined the Navy during the Korean conflict only to be shipped to the Antarctic for Operation Deepfreeze.
The GI Bill allowed him to attend Poteau Community College, now known as Carl Albert State College, where he graduated with an associate degree in diesel engine repair in 1959. As his two kids were growing up, Bud became known to certain wayward children in the neighborhood as “Pop”, and Vera conversely was known as “Mom”. He taught these kids how to fix their motorcycles, clean their guns, how to play cards, hunt, and fish. This moniker remains the name many people in the motorcycle racing community and several other circles still know him as.
He was a watcher of birds, a teacher of young men, a fixer of everything from bicycles to Kenworth’s, and a traveler of the world via Uncle Sam and Admiral Richard E. Byrd. He loved telling stories, hunting, John Wayne, steak, old movies, animals, laughing, fishing, and his family.
He always wanted a degree in teaching because he was afraid some mechanical accident may affect his ability to manipulate engines. This fear never came to fruition during his long career of working on everything from small engines to big rigs. Fortunately, he could not help himself and espoused the role of teacher to anyone who was interested in attaining knowledge. Teaching may not have been his profession, but it was something he could not avoid.
He often told stories ending with humor at the narrator’s expense. He understood a real story was more believable when the teller of the tale could laugh at himself, and that believability would also get a harder laugh out of others. Pop, whose stories often portrayed himself as innocent, was respected as anything but naïve. Like a character out of the movies he loved, he was a hero to many and personified the term patriarch to many who were lucky enough to know him. Goodbye, Bud Durbin, Pepaw, Dad, Son, and Pop. You were all things to us.
He is preceded in death by his father, Bud Durbin, his mother, Marie Durbin, and his sister, Patsy Warwick.
He is survived by his wife of sixty two years, Vera Durbin, a sister, Georgia Gill, a daughter, Diana Lee and her husband Don of Van Buren, a son, Roy Durbin and wife Danielle of Greenwood and four grandchildren, Dusty Lee, Travis Lee, Katlyn Best, and Lilly Durbin.
Services will be at 10:00 A.M. Friday, October 30, 2015 at Ocker Memorial Chapel in Van Buren with interment at US National Cemetery in Fort Smith with military honors, under the direction of Ocker Funeral Home in Van Buren.
Pallbearers will be Kevin Arnold, Allen Fuller, PeeWee Parsons, Johnny Mobley, Levi Best, and Don Lee.
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