Bud Taylor — Lunchroom committee

I was wrapping up a telephone interview with Glens Falls mayoral candidate Harold “Bud” Taylor in 2005 when Bud remarked, “Someone ought to declare open season on that coyote.”

He was referring to Don Coyote, the longtime cartoon mascot of The Post-Star editorial page.

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., loved the sarcastic bite of Don Coyote.

Often when he visited Glens Falls, the senator would ask me, aside, “Will I be in Don Coyote tomorrow?”

Bud, who died over the weekend, just days before his 84th birthday, took Don Coyote’s criticism to heart.

Bud’s laughter after declaring open season on the coyote demonstrated that his remark was meant not as vitriol, but as comic relief.

Bud was known for his wit even in high school.

“Easy going Bud is a guy who takes to football and track like a duck to water. Everyone agrees that wherever there’s a laugh, there’s Bud,” reads the caption beneath his senior photo in the 1958 “Red and Black” Glens Falls High School yearbook.

A Sept. 18, 1958 Post-Star football season preview report described Bud as “a rugged 5'10” 200-pound senior with some previous experience.”

On the track team he threw discuss.

In an early example of his reputation for jurisprudence, Bud — along with Tony Gorry, Ellen Bush, and Rhoda Lazarou — was a judge for the dance contest at the May 9, 1958 Glens Falls High School Varsity G Club record hop to raise money for a new electric score board at the football field.

Bud was treasurer of Varsity G Club, an organization of letter-winning the school’s letter-winning athletes.

About 1,000 people attended the dance.

WPTR radio personality Jack Spector was celebrity disk jockey for the evening.

Morton Batcheldor and Nancy Adams won first place in the dance contest.

Charles Elm and Toby Hurwitz won second place.

I find it fitting that in his senior year of high school, Bud was on the lunchroom committee.

For decades, afterward, Bud was a moderating voice who kept order in the local political lunchroom — attempting to head off political food fights.

Several times in his last few years in office, he commented to me that it was getting more difficult as civility declined in politics — even at the local level.

Bud, who owned an insurance agency, served in local government for nearly 40 years, 16 in elected office, and was chairman of the Glens Falls Republican Committee.

He served four two-year terms representing the city’s 3rd Ward on Warren County Board of Supervisors.

He represented the 3rd Ward on the Glens Falls City Common Council from 1998 to 2005.

He previously served on the Glens Falls Planning Board for 20 years.

He ran for mayor twice — in 2005 and in the special election in 2008 to fill the vacancy when Mayor Roy Akins died.

Bud’s narrow loss in the five-way mayor’s race in 2005 — a race he had been expected to win — was devastating.

Bud went to his camp for a respite and spent some time fishing, and when he emerged, he was ready to continue an active role in the community.

When Bud lost the 2008 special election — he said he was going to “hang up his mayor shoes” and not run for the city’s top office again.

After Bud stepped down from the Board of Supervisors at the end of 2015, he continued as a volunteer member of the boards of EDC Warren County, Warren-Washington Counties Industrial Development Agency, and Glens Falls Civic Center Foundation, and as president of the Crandall Park Beautification Committee, a community organization that raised private funding for and coordinated improved projects at the city-owned park.

Bud was a founding member and president for seventeen years.

“What Henry Crandall did for young people in the community was tremendous — creating Crandall Park, for one thing,” Bud told The Post-Star in 2015. “Kids today — little tykes that are sliding down the sledding hill all the way up through teenagers that are playing basketball — when I see those kids in the park, I often think, ‘How could a guy back in those days have come up with an idea that would have been so consistent over the years that young people would continue to enjoy that property?’”

Bud also was president of The Open Door Mission board, which operated a soup kitchen on South Street and later on Lawrence Street.

Bud didn’t just attend board meetings and manage from afar.

He regularly visited the soup kitchen at mealtimes and became acquainted with those who came there for help.