Farmer was pilot in Portage flying club

12/30/2006

ELMORE - Emery A. "Bud" Blausey, 82, who took over the family farm from his grandparents and continued to work the land until last year, died Tuesday of heart problems at his home.

He didn't want to retire.

"It's a feeling you have for the land," his daughter, Sharon Elder, said.

But his health forced the decision not to farm this year.

Mr. Blausey grew soybeans, corn, and wheat. He used to grow tomatoes and sugar beets and, until the early 1950s, raised sheep and chickens.

He lived in the farmhouse where he grew up, the home of his maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. William Schott. To him, they were Ma and Pa Schott.

His mother, Viola, died when he was 3 and because his father, Albert, was a truck driver, he was raised by his grandparents. "They worked on the farm with horses," his daughter said.

Mr. Blausey was a pilot and charter member of the Portage Valley Flying Club and, until the 1980s, took friends flying around northwest Ohio in his Piper Cub.

He belonged to a group that swapped engines and other parts from antique tractors and other farm equipment and restored them. He repaired engines for neighbors and friends.

He was a lifelong member of Bethel United Brethren Church, Elmore. When the old church was ready for razing, he brought it down with cables and a tractor, his daughter said. And when the new church building was going up, he advised in the construction. He also built bridges at Sugar Creek Golf Course.

"I always told my dad he had an engineering degree, even though he didn't go to college," his daughter said.

He cleared snow for the church and for his neighbors.

"Many times, he would pull people out of the ditch in the middle of the night and never asked a thing in exchange," his daughter said. "He believed in that, being a good neighbor."

He was a board member of Elmore Retirement Village and of Lin-Mor Grain Elevator. He was a charter member in the late 1970s of the Elmore Lions Club. On his 82nd birthday Sept. 29, he received the Melvin Jones Fellowship, the highest honor of the Lions Clubs International Foundation.

Mr. Blausey attended the former Harris-Elmore High School.

Surviving are his wife, Gladys, whom he married Nov. 8, 1947; daughter, Sharon Elder; son, Richard Blausey; sister, Marylene Neeb; five grandchildren, and two great-grandsons.

Services will be at 11 a.m. today in Bethel United Brethren Church, Elmore. Arrangements are by the Crosser Funeral Home. The family suggests tributes to the Elmore Lions Club; Odyssey Health Care of Toledo, or Bethel United Brethren Church.