Buzz Walters
Step inside John “Buzz” Walters’ Takedown Tire and Snack Shop in Rogersville and you will find yourself in a place overflowing with memories – framed, laminated, hanging on walls, lined up on shelves and sandwiched under glass at the tables where old friends stop by to shoot the breeze with him.
On any given day, you might run into one of Walters’ best friends, Jim “Mickey” Boudreau, a fellow wrestling coach and one of the regulars who comes to swap stories about the times they shared. Once, the snack shop was the place to drink coffee and grab a bite to eat, but now it is open when Walters is there to sell tires and work on his collection of great goings-on in the neighborhood. If you want lunch, you can meet him at the Airport Diner.
And if your team is from West Greene, you can bet he’s a fan.
“Look over there. They gave me that autographed ball and shirt,” Walters points proudly to a three-dimensional frame with the gold T-shirt inside, signed by the Lady Pioneers Softball Team who took their talent to the state playoffs in 2016.
Walters opened the tire shop in 1996 after retiring from teaching and coaching. But this Korean-era Marine sergeant has never retired from living a life of good deeds done with military finesse and the hands-on determination of the wrestler he once was.
Walters’ penchant for preserving local history is evident in his collection of paintings of covered bridges, one room schools, Mail Pouch barns, portraits and even one of the tire shop, painted by local artist Bill Locy when it first opened. There’s a small room in the shop dubbed the Takedown Room, filled with photographs, newspaper clippings and memorabilia from a lifetime of wrestling events and seasons that Walters participated in or found reason to praise, as a coach for 30 years at West Greene High School, then a couple of seasons at Beth Center. A laminating machine sits on the table along with stacks of team T-shirts and lists of statistics that Walters knows by heart. If something of local importance shows up in any one of the five or six papers Walters reads every day, it gets laminated and added to this little museum/tire shop on Route 21.
“My mother called me Buzz ever since I was little,” Walters says when asked about the name that everyone knows him by. And no, he never went to a one-room school, even though they are his favorite icons of the past.
“I went to a four-room school in Mapletown,” he says, gesturing to a pen and ink drawing of a miner beside a faded photo of Poland 3 mine. “My father was a miner – that’s where he worked.” Beside it is a painting of his mother done by a Korean artist. There’s a personal touch to everything Walters collects.
Walters’ love of wrestling was honed in matches during high school, then in friendly competitions with fellow Marines while in service. A scholarship for wrestling and football helped pay the way to a degree in teaching at Waynesburg College, and Walters was hired to teach social studies and coach in 1961, a year after West Greene School District opened its new high school. The one-room schools were closed and the old high school in Rogersville became a grade school. In time, Graysville Elementary would be built and the old high school would become apartments, then be demolished. Walters taught and coached through it all.
Along with educational innovations, the 1960s brought sharp memories of moon walks, Vietnam and political turmoil. Walters remembers where he was when President Kennedy was assassinated, “on the way to a wrestling clinic.”
The little red brick Crouse Schoolhouse between Rogersville and Waynesburg is a landmark worth preserving. Over the years it was painted on slate by artist Barbara Deynzer and photographed hundreds of times even as it began to show its age. The big brass bell disappeared from the cupola and the roof was beginning to leak. When the Greene County Historical Society finally mustered the funds to begin serious restoration work, it was Walters who helped lead the charge.
As project manager of the Crouse School preservation and maintenance fund through the Greene County Historical Society, Walters is drill sergeant-determined to keep the donations flowing. “Big jars” for spare change support are in every shop and service station in western Greene County, from Rogersville to Nineveh to New Freeport. There are souvenir pencils, rulers and sweatshirts at the Historical Society’s museum store and a bullpen of people who once attended school there or had a relative that did who contribute money and volunteer hours to get the job done.
With the holidays approaching, there is no wreath hanging on the newly roofed schoolhouse and its restored cupola, but Walters is happy to announce that the next stage of the project is scheduled to bring electricity and eventually phone service.
The holidays bring yet another campaign of good deeds into focus and Walters is right on it. For more than 30 years he and a band of fellow Marine Leathernecks have been doing a Greene County version of “Toys for Tots” for children of low-income families.
Collection boxes are out in the community to gather the new toys that will be distributed on Dec. 17 to families who bring their social security card information and proof of income to the Greene County Fairgrounds, Carmichaels Legion Hall, St. Hughes Church in Clarksville and Bobtown Fire Hall between 10 a.m. and noon.
Walters remembers how this project got started, back in the day when new toys weren’t that easy to come by. Used bicycles were donated and Leatherneck elves did repairs and painted them up to be re-gifted to kids hungry for their own bike to ride.
“We’re too old to do that now,” Walters admits. “But we get lots of new bicycles donated and that’s one of the best presents a kid can get.”