Carlton 'Bud' Howorth III,
39; cancer survivor, hard rock fan
The yearbook entry for Carlton
"Bud" Howorth III, Class of 1981, Cohasset High School, lists his pet peeve as
"wasting time."
"He was in a hurry," says John
MacLeman, a friend and former colleague. "He wanted to get it all in.
"You could tell he was just
soaking it up, every minute he spent with you," MacLeman said.
Perhaps that stemmed from his
abounding enthusiasm for the things he loved. And there were a lot of things
he loved.
"He talked in absolutes,"
MacLeman said. At restaurants, Buddy would tell the waitress, "This is the
best hamburger I've ever had."
He loved bacon and eggs. He
loved fishing, skiing, football and hockey. He loved his two black Labradors.
He loved his girlfriend, Donna Reis.
"He put me on a pedestal," she
says.
And he loved his blond daughter
Elizabeth, now 3.
"He adored her, she adored
him," says his father, Carlton Howorth II, also known as Bud. "She was his
life."
Buddy, 39, was a child of the
'80s. He loved heavy-metal music, the sound that characterized that decade for
many, and, according to his girlfriend, he was a "computer geek."
Mr. Howorth said his only son,
a technical support manager at Ciber Corp. in Woburn, found the hard-rock
sound relaxing. But the fast-living image that went along with a lot of the
bands didn't apply to him.
"He was a clean-cut kid," the
father said. "He just happened to like that music."
At the memorial service for
Buddy, the minister quoted Bruce Springsteen and Motley Crue from the pulpit
of the pristine white-clapboard Second Congregational Church, in Cohasset,
Mass.
Engaging. Passionate about
music. Adoring. These are some of the words used by friends to describe him.
Photographs from various stages of life show him as a youngster in the snow,
as a teenager with the football team, and as a grown man, beaming as he holds
his daughter up for the camera.
"He believed in always being
happy," Donna said. He had recovered from cancer, and the experience made him
live for the moment. "He had the greatest outlook on life after that."
John MacLeman says Buddy and
his ex-wife, Karen, set him up on a blind date with a friend of theirs named
Susan. It worked. They are getting married in October.
That Thursday night at The
Station, Buddy and Donna were right next to the stage when the fire started.
When Donna fell down in the
crush, Buddy pushed her to safety.
MacLeman said Buddy was like
that. With any friend in danger, "it would have been them first."
-- Jenny Holland
Source - Providence Journal
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