Clester Ray "Buddy" Moore, long-time Kountze resident, passed away February 13, 2009 at Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital in Beaumont.
Known to many as the white-bearded newspaper man, Buddy was a generous person who spent his life devoted to his twin passions-newspapers and family.
"At the ripe old age" of 12, Buddy earned his first job as a printer's devil at the Silsbee Bee. Sweeping floors soon turned to column writing and when he was 14 he began penning his trademark column, Sports Galore, by C.R. Moore. At 18, he was a Journeyman's Printer and his love affair with writing persisted for most of the next 65 years.
With printer's ink in his blood, he worked for the Orange Leader, the Houston Post and the Augusta Georgia Chronicle and created the paper that became the Hardin County News, but his passion was in publishing the sometimes controversial, but always quirky, Kountze News. A prominent member of the Kountze community, Buddy was instrumental in bringing international attention to Kountze through Big Thicket tourism events, local and national political associations and by introducing the world's first legally married armadillos, Hoover and Starr.
He was an advocate for the less fortunate, a sucker for a good cause and a doting husband, father and grandfather and uncle.
These memories and more live on through his wife, Jeanie, daughter Cherrye and husband, Peppe, daughter Charlee , grandson, Cole, brother Jack and wife, Peggy, in-laws Ernest and Shirley Cherry, sisters-in-law Debra Alegre and husband, Butch, Catherine Manshack, Monese Odom and husband, Randy, brothers-in-law Scottie and wife, Pam and Ernest Cherry, Jr., numerous friends, family members and the Kountze community.
A memorial service will be held on Tuesday, February 17 at 4:00 at the First United Methodist Church in Kountze, with the celebration of his life continuing at the Kirby Hill House.
