Ex-trustee's firm installed many utilities

3/1/2007

Burdell "Burt" Moose, 72, a former four-term trustee of Lucas County's Springfield Township whose company installed waterline and other underground utilities, died yesterday in St. Luke's Hospital.

He had a stroke Tuesday at the offices of Burt Moose Inc. while working on a bid for the firm's next job, his son, Jeff, said.

Mr. Moose, a Republican, was elected a township trustee in 1973. He was defeated in 1989 when he ran for a fifth term.

He was long interested in his community and earlier served on the township's board of zoning appeals.

When it came to sewers and roads - two major concerns of township government - "he knew what he was talking about," his son said.

"He was supervising people who were doing a job he knew inside and out."

When Mr. Moose founded his business in 1982, he'd been a superintendent of the former Wayne Reed Inc. His 25 years of experience at the underground utilities contractor was on-the-job training, his son said.

"The economy was not good [in 1982], but he just went for it," said his son, a former employee.

Developers and municipalities came to know his firm's reputation for "quality work and fair price," his son said. "He was about giving value to the customers."

In the early 1970s, Mr. Moose and his wife bought 20 acres of barren farm land in southern Hillsdale County. He refurbished some old earth-moving equipment and dug a two-acre pond over two summers. He had landscaping equipment just to manicure the property - now about 60 acres "on what looks like a state park," his son said.

Pat descriptions of his personality didn't fit.

"Either you knew Burt, or you didn't," his son said "What drove him was that he loved his wife and his kids very much, and he was bound and determined that they would have the very best of what he was capable of providing for them."

Mr. Moose was born in Defiance. He was a 1952 graduate of DeVilbiss High School and was a U.S. Coast Guard veteran.

Surviving are his wife, Sue, whom he married July 7, 1956; daughter, Sheryl Carroll; son, Jeff Moose; brother, Leslie Moose; sisters, Evon Rufenacht, Beverly Brown, and Karen Cordrey, and seven grandchildren.

The body will be in the Reeb Funeral Home, Sylvania, after 4 p.m. tomorrow. Services will be at 11 a.m. Saturday in Providence Lutheran Church, Springfield Township, where he was a former church council president and Sunday school superintendent.

The family suggests tributes to Providence Lutheran Church or Community of Christ Lutheran Church in Whitehouse.