Benny Joe Buzbee

“Well, it just grieves me…” that our family must announce the natural passing of our beloved father, Benny Joe Buzbee at age eighty-seven.

“Pop” as he was known for over the past four decades, was born in Queen City, Texas on April 25, 1937, to Hobson and Gracie Buzbee. He graduated from Texas High School in Texarkana, Texas and then worked at the Lone Star Ammunition Depot where he met and dated our mother, Carolyn Diane Summers. They later married and grew our family into five children, Brenda, Benita, Paul, Chris and Stacy, then moved to Natchitoches, Louisiana and quickly added another child, Michele. Furthermore, he would welcome an addition to our family, Karen, who became a permanently loved member of our sibling ensemble.

While raising his family, Pop worked in Natchitoches as a meat market manager and then, for many years, the sole proprietor of a successful auto paint and body shop. Eventually, Pop worked offshore in the Gulf of Mexico as a lease operator for Pennzoil from whom he finally retired. In retirement, Benny and Diane traveled the US from the regional festivals and fairs of Louisiana to the Rocky Mountains, the Desert Southwest, and the Great Plains—always ensuring to be back home for Louisiana’s deer hunting season.

Pop was inherently a profound and studied outdoorsman. He shared his awe and curiosities for the wilderness and waters with his own children at their earliest and then eventually with their children as well. Whether hunting, fishing, gardening, loading up the kids to go blackberry picking, or watching an ongoing violent thunderstorm from his front porch, Pop consistently shared his love and fascination of the physical, natural world with all his kids—sons and daughters alike. Still, there was one thing that he cherished more than whitetail and natural wonders and that was his love for his God and his family.

Pop was a tangible example of a good and Godly man who guided his family down the straight and narrow, typically in a tired old station wagon that spilled out with kids in the Church parking lot each Sunday morning and evening. The love of his family was often earned through great and terrible sacrifices which he persistently made without complaint. For Pop, leading by example was not a practiced skill occasionally pulled out when times were tough but a core element that had always existed in him, perpetually evident, regardless of whether tributes or trials surrounded. He was unwavering in his principles, unafraid of obstacles, unconvinced of the flaws of others, while frequently explaining to his sons, fixed and adamantly, that a true southern gentleman must carry, always, a cloth handkerchief and a sharp pocketknife…minimum.

The pride in and love for his family that Pop showed us our entire lives now reflects, and reciprocates, from his family back to him. He will take with him our pride and love and share it with our mother, Diane and our sister, Brenda when they get him settled in Heaven.

And he will leave here, his own pride and love, to grow generation after generation, with us…his survivors. 

Remaining in love:

His daughters and sons— 

Benita Buzbee

Paul Buzbee

Chris Buzbee

Stacy (Buzbee) and Doug Rister

Michele (Buzbee) and Mike Auer

Karen Puente

Fifteen grandchildren and fourteen great-grandchildren