Honoring Our Veterans – Bud O’Shea
Bud O’Shea, CEO of O’Shea Builders, was drafted into the Army during the Cold War. After basic training in March 1957 in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and specialized training in Augusta, Georgia, Bud was shipped out to Stuttgart, Germany.
In between, he got married to his sweetheart, Helene Eddington. “On my first leave, I proposed marriage to her and we were married at Fort Gordon in Augusta, Georgia at an Army chapel,” he says.
Helene followed Bud to Stuttgart, despite her father’s wishes. “She told her dad, ‘I’m going to Germany with Bud,’ and he said, ‘No, you’re not. They don’t have drinkable water there and they don’t have soap,’” Bud recalls. “She told her dad she didn’t care, she was going to be with me.”
They lived in Stuttgart from August 1957 to December 1958 -- with drinkable water and soap.
“She came from a family of ten children. I came from a family of four children and both of us were very close to our family,” Bud says. “But when we had to live that long together with no other family contact, it drew us very close.” While they were in Germany, Bud and Helene’s first son, David, was born there in an Army hospital in 1958.
Bud was in the Signal Corps’ Radio Repair Division. “It was pretty good duty for me,” he says. Bud and his peers talked about the Cold War, but it didn’t affect them personally. However, there were reminders of war around the city. “There were ruins from World War II in Stuttgart. It was very striking emotionally to see that,” Bud says. They were a constant reminder that conflict can happen any time.
So were the night-time “alert trainings.” These were unannounced drills, signaled by a siren, that usually occurred during the night and helped prepare the men for ground combat. “We would be judged on how quickly we responded and reported to a particular destination in the field,” Bud explains. “We had to load supplies, load the trucks, and go in a convoy to a destination. Winter is truly winter in Germany and more than once I spent time out in the field, sometimes a week, on these trainings when it was pretty darn cold. It wasn’t fun but it was good discipline to expose you to what could happen.”
“I’m glad I was young then!” he laughs. “And I was blessed that I served during peace time.”
On this Veterans Day, O’Shea Builders thanks all of those who have served.