Coronavirus took beloved Officer Bud and rural NC community’s ability to grieve together
The virus had taken Officer Bud, and now it had also taken a community’s ability to unite in their grief.
When Dedie Weaver thought about that, it was hard not to cry. She drove past the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday, and just the sight of the patrol car out front — Officer Bud’s patrol car — was enough to bring her to tears.
A wreath of blue and white flowers hung on the grille. A larger bouquet lay on the hood. People had brought flowers of their own and placed them there. They’d brought stuffed animals. Someone left a hat with the Superman logo.
Tucked into the pile of mementos, so it wouldn’t blow away, was a note in the handwriting of a child: “Bud,” it began, “thank you for always being ...” and the words disappeared under a teddy bear.
It wasn’t merely the sight of it all that made Weaver emotional. It was the juxtaposition and symbolism. There was Officer Bud’s patrol car, parked at an angle in front of an American flag at half-mast, and there were the flowers and bears, and yet all around, down Main Street and beyond, everything felt quiet and lonely.
It was a cruel irony. Officer Bud never wanted anyone to feel alone.
In his years as a school resource officer in Montgomery County, how many times had he sat down at lunch with a middle schooler eating by himself, just so the kid might have someone to talk to? Weaver, a teacher who’d worked alongside Bud for years, could tell a story like that. Her son had been born with one eye “and was terribly bullied” at school, she said.
A few years ago, he went to prom alone. It might’ve been a sad night if not for Officer Bud, who was working the dance. Bud saw Aaron Weaver there, by himself.
He knew Aaron had written a book about zombies, and Bud and Aaron called each other names from The Walking Dead television show. Aaron was Carl, after the young character with one eye. Bud was Rick, after the strong-willed deputy turned post-apocalyptic leader.
That night, while music thumped and kids danced, a 40-year-old man and a high school senior — Rick and Carl, in their imaginations — talked about zombies and a TV show like they were close friends. In some ways they were. It made her son’s prom, Dedie Weaver said, “and (he) didn’t feel alone. That’s kind of what Bud was. He looked for opportunities to show kindness, and be that change in the world.
“There are numerous stories like that, with Bud.”
Now people could drive past a memorial on the side of the road, but mourners — and there were many grieving in Montgomery County — couldn’t say goodbye. Not how they wanted. Not in a new world of social distancing and stay-at-home orders.
They couldn’t hug Bud’s wife, Heather. They couldn’t comfort his five children in person. A community couldn’t come together.
“It’s just real symbolic of just the isolation and the loneliness,” Weaver said of the patrol car.
Alone in their grief
Weaver had known Officer Bud a long time. After his death on March 31, it seemed like everyone in Montgomery County had, given the outpouring on social media.
He was 43. His full name was Sypraseuth Phouangphrachanh. It was a Laotian name. His family immigrated from Laos when he was a young boy, fleeing the violence and madness after the Vietnam War and Laos’ own decades-long civil war.
On Facebook, he’d shortened his last name to Phouang. Everyone, though, just called him Bud, and one of his cousins figured that was because Bud made friends with ease. Sometimes it was Deputy Bud. Usually Officer Bud. He’d served in the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department for 14 years.
He’d spent most of that time as a school resource officer. That was his official title, anyway, but it didn’t reflect his other roles: Wrestling and tennis coach. Counselor. Mentor. High school game and event security. D.A.R.E. officer. Snake-catcher, more than once.
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The teachers and school leaders, the kids who’d come through middle schools in Montgomery County over the past decade — a lot of them could tell stories about Officer Bud, about the things he’d done and what he’d meant. But now they were spread out in homes all over the county. School had been out since mid-March.
To people in Montgomery County, about 55 miles south of Greensboro and east of Charlotte, the threat of the virus had seemed so foreign — a problem that might strike more densely-populated areas, but not here. The Uwharrie National Forest comprises most of the county.
The largest town is Troy, population 3,300, and if the virus could find such a tiny dot on a map, people here learned it could lurk anywhere.
Perhaps it made sense that in such a small place everyone seemed to know Officer Bud. The news that he’d become sick spread over Facebook, and at first it didn’t sound like anything serious. Just a sinus infection. He’d stay home for a while and be back to making people smile in no time. And then the next thing everyone knew, there were prayer requests when Bud went to the hospital.
Then he was gone.
Bud became the first person in Montgomery County to die of COVID-19. The day he died was also the day the state announced its 10th death from the virus. Now, less than a week later, that number is in the 30s and rising quickly.
‘Anything for the kids’
Just a few weeks ago, Bud was teaching his D.A.R.E. class, warning fifth-graders about the dangers of drugs. For a while, he’d been looking forward to implementing a program he thought might be more beneficial, one designed to stop kids from vaping before they started. Now some who worked with him were trying to answer questions from children who revered him.
One morning last week, Chanda Stokes received an email. She’s the principal at West Montgomery Middle, where Officer Bud had worked for years, and during an interview she was not sure how long she’d be able to talk about him without needing to stop to collect herself.
The email was from a student, and when Stokes opened it she encountered a question that no one could really answer: “Ms. Stokes, can you tell me why this happened?”
The question was difficult enough for the adults who knew Bud and worked alongside him. Dale Ellis, the superintendent of Montgomery County schools, knew Bud for his desire to do one good deed a day, beyond the usual. Stokes knew him as the one who was always there to help the kids who might be going through something at home.
Emily Dunn, an assistant principal at East Montgomery Middle, where Bud worked this school year, knew him to jump behind the concession stand at games when the lines grew too long. He’d be there in a hurry, ready to make popcorn and serve candy bars. Weaver and Sabrina Gooch, both middle school teachers, knew Bud for the positive effect he had on their own children.
They all knew Bud for what he’d do every December around Christmas. He’d show up at schools and events around the county with a sack full of candy, for the students, and small gifts, for the teachers. Suzannah Laucher, the guidance counselor at West Montgomery Middle, knew Bud for a lot of things.
Decades ago, they’d gone to high school together — Richmond High in Rockingham. She was a year ahead and didn’t know him then. All these years later, she wondered how much his experience as an immigrant in a more rural part of the South had shaped him. Now Laucher knew Bud for the way he looked out for “misfits and outcasts,” she said.
She knew him for handling that black snake that kept coming near the school entrance a while back. Every time, a call went out on the radio: “Bud, your friend is here,” and he’d come out and carry it to the woods, too gentle to kill it.
Laucher knew Bud for his role with the anti-bullying team he helped organize at school, along with Dedie Weaver. And she knew him for that phrase he always repeated: “Anything for the kids.”
She could hear the words in her mind, like when Bud transformed into Kung Fu Panda at a school talent show. You don’t have to do all that, she’d told him, and then an auditorium full of middle schoolers loved it when he did.
“Anything for the kids,” Bud had said then, and many other times, and he’d often laugh after he said it.
“He meant it,” Laucher said. “’Anything for the kids.’”
Like a superhero
In a small school system, Officer Bud often served as the conduit between teachers and the students they tried to reach. He knew what was going on inside of some of their homes, because sometimes he’d have to show up at those homes in his capacity as a deputy.
One time Stokes, the principal at West Montgomery Middle, was looking for an eighth-grader who wasn’t in class. The student wasn’t the kind to skip school. Stokes became concerned, until she found the student with Officer Bud, deep in conversation “about life stuff,” Stokes said.
“There were times when he would say, you know, I think I’m just going to go make a home visit and see what’s really going on over there,” she said. “Because as an officer you can do that.”
Now Stokes and her colleagues were left to try to console the kids that Bud so often comforted. It couldn’t be done in person, given the virus, and so the county tried to spread the word that grief counselors were available by phone, or on online video meetings through Zoom.
Everyone knew it wasn’t the same.
Laucher, the guidance counselor, wondered how kids were handling it at home. One of her favorite Officer Bud moments in recent years — one of everyone’s favorites — came when West Montgomery Middle held its “superhero day.” It was part of the anti-bullying program. Teachers encouraged students to show up dressed like a superhero, with the message that superheroes fight for good and defend the most vulnerable.
Bud came to school wearing a red cape and a blue Superman shirt underneath his uniform. A group of girls came dressed as Superman, themselves, and they found Bud in a hallway — five Supermen, or perhaps one Superman and four Supergirls. One wore a red skirt, another a pink cape. Laucher made them all pose, and in the picture Bud is in the middle, grinning, pulling apart his button-down to reveal the S on his chest.
“I mean, he’s like a superhero to a lot of kids,” Laucher said, and she feared the implications. “It just really makes it more real for them, and more scary,” she said.
Escape from ‘a living hell’
More than most of Bud’s colleagues, Laucher knew a bit about his background. He didn’t talk about it much, but she sensed that what he’d gone through earlier in life made him especially attuned to the needs of those who might benefit from a laugh or a moment of kindness.
Down in Jacksonville, Florida, one of Bud’s cousins, A.K. Sriratanakoul, knew that to be true. A.K.’s father and Bud’s mother were siblings. They’d escaped Laos in the late-1970s when after the civil war the country was “a living hell,” A.K said.
As small boys, A.K. and Bud spent about a year in a refugee camp across the border in Thailand. Then with the help of American sponsors, they’d immigrated to the United States — first A.K. and his family to Georgia; then Bud and his family to Rockingham.
Now, A.K. remembered the summers they’d spent together in North Carolina. Playing hide and seek in the woods. The time Bud fell asleep among a bunch of friends and woke up with Cheetos poking out of his nose, a Slim Jim hanging out of his mouth. Bud was usually the one pranking others. A.K. remembered how, even as a kid, Bud drew people close to him, and he remembered the sacrifices their parents made in America.
“Coming over to the United States was the only option,” A.K. said. “Otherwise, we’d all be dead. I mean, honestly. We’d be dead. So we came here, and that same kind of drive, it kept us all going.”
A.K. will not remember Bud’s funeral, because he did not go. The threat of the virus kept him home. He’d read about a funeral in Albany, Georgia, and how it might have led to an outbreak. Since Bud’s death, A.K. has learned about his cousin’s influence — about how beloved Bud was in this rural North Carolina county.
One final good deed
To his friends and neighbors, Bud’s death has made all those distant stories on the news feel more real. It has made the crisis feel more urgent.
Sloan Bourgeois, the principal of the elementary school where Bud served as the D.A.R.E. officer, said his death has made her afraid to leave her house, afraid to walk into a grocery store. Bud was a bigger guy, but healthy enough that he never missed work, or called in sick.
The more some have thought about it, though, the more they’ve rationalized that maybe Bud’s death was one more act of service — one final good deed, in its own cruel way.
Sabrina Gooch, a teacher at West Montgomery Middle who’d known Bud for about as long as he’d worked with the schools, didn’t come to the thought on her own but now she ascribed to it.
“I just didn’t understand why,” she said. “Why Bud, of all people, that gave our whole county what he did — why would we lose somebody like Bud?”
And then someone told Gooch that maybe he “was still protecting us by giving us awareness.”
The thought brought some measure of comfort.
He’d been a protector. Now those who knew him hope his legacy will endure. They hope that on the other side of the pandemic, whenever that other side might arrive, Montgomery County might be a kinder place because of people trying to emulate Bud.
For now, though, a lot of the people he touched grieve alone — a community unable to mourn the way communities do when people like Officer Bud are lost.
Yet it wasn’t long after he died before someone thought of a way to honor him, and the idea spread. Soon enough people found a way to collectively remember Bud, after all.
At night, in their solitude, they lit candles and placed them in their windows.
