Bud Moon had tremendous impact on many lives

Idaho is known as the Gem State, but her true treasure lies not in star garnets, opals or precious metals. Her treasure is in her citizens. Bonner County’s native son Bud Moon was a gem of rare distinction.

His grandfather, a lumberman and the first Lawrence Gillman Moon, brought his family to Idaho in 1906, having purchased 1,000 acres on Bottle Bay on the west side of Lake Pend Oreille. His grandson Bud was the third in a proud string of Lawrence Gillman Moons, now reaching into the sixth generation – hence nicknames to set them apart.

Bud’s father, L. G. “Pike” Moon Jr., was the mayor of Sandpoint in the 1940s and the proprietor of Moon Funeral Home. He also ran the local ambulance service. As a youngster, Bud would sometimes be called out of school to come and help his father with “the business,” so from an early age he learned to value service to family and fellow man. Compassion would become a hallmark of his life.

Growing up on the shores of Lake Pend Oreille, Moon was as at home on the water as he was on land. As children, he and his sisters would deliver garden goods and eggs to shoreline neighbors in the family’s small boat. By the time he was 13, he was working at the marina and had his own boat. Throughout his long and productive life, boats were a passion. They proved to be an avenue for friendships, influence and community leadership that extended beyond his home communities of Sandpoint and Hope.

Several qualities set Bud Moon apart from others from an early age. He valued people, he enjoyed serving his community and his country, and he had a gift for seeing the potential in projects and ideas way ahead of his time. He promoted patriotism at every opportunity, and uncompromising honesty was what he expected of himself and others. His incredible energy in pursuing goals and projects exhausted some and baffled others. He really loved to see how things would turn out, and ideas churned in his mind unceasingly. An inventory of his good works and accomplishments would fill a book. The Rotarian motto of “Service Above Self” was his own motto long before he became a Rotarian.

Moon enlisted in the United States Navy while still in high school – as an enlistee he was allowed to graduate before reporting for duty. He hoped to see the world and was a little disappointed to be assigned to Farragut for boot camp. From Farragut, he was sent to Iowa State College to study diesel mechanics; he then served in the South Pacific until the end of World War II. He serviced the “yogi boats” that ferried supplies from the islands to the large ships at sea. His shipboard companions called him “Old Red;” even though he was right out of high school they looked up to him and turned to him for counsel. He did his duty and did it well, living by the ethic that would lead him to tell his children in later years that “even if you are only pushing a broom, do the best job you can do.”

Once home from the service, he married his high school sweetheart, Betty Palmer, on Dec. 26, 1946. They headed off to the University of Idaho, where Moon hoped to pursue a career as a doctor, but once again the needs of the family business called him out of school. His father became ill, so the newlyweds both attended San Francisco College of Mortuary Science and returned home to take over the funeral home, which they ran for 20 years.

They built their own home on the river at Rocky Point, raising a family of six children and serving their community together. Moon served as the president of the Idaho Funeral Directors before selling the business to Coffelts. Then he went into land development and other progressive buiness pursuits.

His wife became ill in the late 1960s, dying from cancer in 1971. Twice blessed, he found a future together with Susan Baldwin who had worked for him during the development of Westwood Village. She laughs today, remembering that his courtship sometimes consisted of him giving her a list of things to do in the office, then going down to the shore to play in the sand with her young son Brandon. They married in Sandpoint on April 29, 1972. Bud and Susan Moon were a happy working partnership for 36 years, rearing their children and realizing their dreams together.

“He was ever the gentleman, and treated me like a princess,” she says of him. They were soul mates who treated each other and all their combined family with respect. “That’s what made it work,” she believes.

Not only their own, but at least a dozen other youths found a home with the Moons. They were expected to obey the house rules and finish school. As a mentor to them and others throughout the years, he never lectured, but listened. When people sought his advice, he would begin with the question, “What do you think you should do?” Then with quiet conversation he helped them to see their own answers. His leadership was by association and good example, rather than preaching or enforcement.

A complete list of his community service and accomplishments probably does not exist.

He was a 60-year member of the Elks in Sandpoint, as well as active in the Lions, Rotary and Kiwanis Clubs. He was a founding member/director of Schweitzer Ski Basin, Bonner County Museum, Panhandle Bank, Sandpoint Airport, Pend Oreille Arts and Crafts Festival, Wooden Boat Festival, the Syringa Water Association and Rocky Point Sewer District – to name a few.

He was the youngest member ever to serve on the Sandpoint City Council, and after he and Susan moved to East Hope he served on the City Council there. When the previous mayor died, he became the mayor, serving since 2001.

He was the first to own a sailboat on the lake, had the first houseboat on the lake, and developed Rotary Marine Inc., which adapted rotary car engines to power boats. He led the fight to stop the field burning that enshrouded Hope in smoke each August, but also drew up a prototype for a method of clean burning for the farmers. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the local chapter of the Antique and Wooden Boat Society.

Somehow, he and his family found time for fun together, too. Sometimes they floated the Moyie River in truck inner tubes. Their home was the “weekend center” for a dozen and more friends and family members, where Moon manned a commercial grill he “installed” (using the chainsaw method) in a large wooden table he had built. He loved to be the cook, taking special care with an artful presentation. Over several years he built a scale-model “Miki-Miki” WWII tugboat after searching months to find the plans. Moonlight dinner cruises, relaxed and rambling expeditions scouting out old boats, sometimes pizza and a bottle of Moose Drool on the back deck, holidays with his children – he found joy in life and shared it freely. He got a kick out of being mentioned in his pal Pat McManus’ books as “Fats” Moon.

In his last years he experienced several close calls, surviving both a major heart attack and a car accident that tore his aorta. But when lung cancer struck, it took him fairly quickly. He died Feb. 29, urging his family to be kind to others because “we don’t know the burdens they bear.”

His services were held in the new Sandpoint Events Center, which overflowed the 450-seat capacity. There was a Naval Honor Guard, rarely given for enlisted men, and recognition of veterans and Sandpoint High School graduates. Around town there are various memorial plaques here and there, in quiet remembrance of the tremendous impact one man who cared had on his community through a lifetime of service.

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