Bud, Patty showed us how to live
Evening Update
The Front Page
Evening Update
Tuesday, April 13, 2021
By Ken Tingley
More often than not in our newsroom, we referred to them as the Foulkes in the plural form. It was not Patty and Bud, but the Foulkes. They were a team, a tandem telling the world and our readers about their travels over a 16-year period on our travel page.
Their work was published under a shared byline - Patricia and Robert Foulke. When they showed up weekly at our office - they submitted their copy in typewritten form in those days - they were inevitably together sharing a story about their latest adventure.
Most of us envied them. They were traveling the world and getting paid to write about it.
That’s why it was so startling to see that Patty had left us this weekend at the age of 89, because it just didn’t seem possible that world could be as good with half that byline missing.
Their teaching gigs took them around the country, and ultimately to our little corner of the world where Bud became chairman of the Skidmore College English department and they lived in Lake George. They eventually turned those summer research trips and teaching sabbaticals overseas into a travel-writing business that produced 15 travel books and hundreds of columns for Post-Star readers.
It turned out to be a 35-year second career.
That tenure ended abruptly when they were victims of some of our first newsroom when we eliminated our travel page their column.
My recollection was they were sad the column was ending, but happy they got to do it as long as they did. But that is not where it ended.
They were back in my office a few years later pitching an idea for a series of articles on retirement communities.
If anything, Bud and Patty were pragmatic. They were in their 80s and realized they would not be able to take care of their property - and perhaps each other - forever. They wanted to make an informed decision about their options for the future. Over a five-year period they visited 131 retirement communities from Maine to Florida.
I suspect this was another adventure, another way of sharing their byline for the good of not only their community, but seniors like themselves. What resulted was a four-part series called “What happens next?” That The Post-Star published in July 2015.
“Let’s begin by saying that we would rather stay right where we are and age in place,” Patty and Bud wrote to start the series. “We’ve heard the old saw from friends and acquaintances: `They’re going to have to carry me out of here feet first.’ But staying put may not be the best for us or others. This article, and those that follow, are designed to help all of us approach that choice with knowledge and clear, hard questions.”
And it did.
The next year the series was honored by the New York State Associated Press with a third place award for public service.
Not bad for a couple in their 80s.
We looked at it as a continuation of our nursing home coverage from two years earlier, “Who will take care of us?”
I seem to remember inviting Bud and Patty the banquet in Saratoga Springs, but as usual they had other commitments. We later had a little ceremony for them in the newsroom.
Patty and Bud eventually ended up in a place called Friendship Village in Bloomington, Minnesota. I suspect that might have been one of the 131 facilities they visited when researching our series.
While they were here they were a big part of the community around them, but maybe more importantly they showed us the way to remain active and productive in our golden years.
Quote of the Day
“I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart — never building anything, never putting anything together.”
- Former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner on Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio.
