A career math teacher and community organizer, born August 2, 1934 to a low-income family in Detroit, and married to the same woman for 37 years with four children, in the summer of 1993 Bud Rue proposed to the executive committee of the Upper Delaware Unitarian Universalist Fellowship -- of which he was a charter member -- that the congregation do something to serve the local community, in addition to meeting for worship services as the group had then been doing for six years. The first walk was held October 24th.
For the first five years, the walk's destination was Innisfree in Milanville, Pennsylvania. In 1970, Bud Rue and some other teachers from Montclair, New Jersey founded the non-profit Innisfree Corporation. Over ensuing years, with Bud's support, Innisfree was home to summer camp programs, youth hostel, drama workshops, numerous experiential and outdoor education programs, a parent-run Montessori elementary program known as The River School, safe-housing for clients of the Wayne County Victim Intervention Program; and from 1987 to 1995 the Upper Delaware Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, as well as other educational programs in need of space. Bud was an integral part of many of these activities.
In 1988, he and his wife Ann retired from teaching and moved to Innisfree full-time where he devoted his remaining years to community activities. About this time, Bud became the first person in Wayne County to begin talking about forming a local affiliate chapter of Habitat for Humanity, and is remembered as that local group's founder. Wayne County HfH incorporated in 1989 and in October 2002 was constructing its eighth home. Bud was pleased to take part in more than one ground-breaking for Habitat homes in Wayne County before his death. In 1992, he worked with Liz Huntington of Galilee and others to found the Upper Delaware Valley Group #533 of Amnesty International.
Shared Readings
AUDIO (MP2) FILES IN THE VOICE OF BUD RUE
Right click and "Save Target As..." to your hard drive:
If, by Rudyard Kipling
You Have No Enemies, by Charles Mackay
A few days before the 1993 walk-a-thon, Bud he gave this cartoon to family members. It illustrates not only a sense of humor, but his attitude toward personal struggles in life . . .
In his own words
Autobiographical statements written in 1968 and 1969.
Related Items:
A Habitat for Humanity member explains the cause by Bud Rue, The Wayne Independent, April 10, 1990.
