Buddy Olliff

                                                         1948-2005

Eddy Jones:

William Lewis “Buddy” Olliff, age 57, died Thursday evening, April 7, 2005.
The Candler County native lived most of his life in the Metter and Ollifftown areas and was a member of New Beulah United Methodist Church. He worked for over 25 years in the logging industry and on his farm with the cows. He loved to work in his garden, fish, watch his grandsons race motorcycles, and be a friend to everyone. He will be sadly missed by his tool-box companion, Rider.
He is survived by his wife, Cheryl Lee Olliff, of Metter; sons and daughter-in-law, Ashley and Melissa Olliff and Adam Olliff, all of Metter; grandchildren, Zach Olliff, Molly and Chase Sconyers, all of Metter; his mother, Sybol Olliff Toole of Metter; sister and brother-in-law: Martha and Don Farrow of Midville; several nieces and nephews; Adam’s special friend Michelle Price and her children, Brittany and Bailey.
Funeral services were conducted at 11 a.m. Monday at Morgan Family Funeral Home, with burial in the Rosemary Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery. Rev. Gordon D. Dukes Jr. and Elder Tommy Rountree officiated.
Pallbearers were Lee Durden, Jeff Durden, Tommy Hunt, Clint Colley, Brinson Lanier, Ike Webb, Bill Mercer, Ronnie Ponder, Dean Monroe, Blake Monroe and Troy Oglesby.
Honorary pallbearers were Edenfield’s Morning Coffee Bunch and the Metter High School Class of 1966.
Morgan Family Funeral Home of Metter was in charge of arrangements.

There are those people in this world that that make an impression on you from the very first time you meet them. You know right away when you first meet that you have indeed found a friend. Buddy Olliff was one of those people. Although God has removed him from our presence, He still lives on in our minds and in our hearts. We have memories too many to tell in one night such as this. I would like to share a few with you now.

          Connie Franklin remembers that Buddy married his high school sweetheart and they were so happy for 40 years.  The funniest thing about that was when Buddy had to sign Cheryl’s report card her senior year.  They worked hard and played hard together. No one ever heard a cross word between them.

          Cheryl was still in school when Buddy graduated. I’m sure you all remember senior privilege week. That’s the week that girls and guys broke up. Of course there are other things that happened that week as well but we won’t discuss those at this time. Well Buddy and Cheryl broke up and Cheryl threw Buddy’s class ring at him. He ducked and she hit Buck Powell. Cheryl says that good friend Annie Marsh help straighten it all out.

          When Cheryl and Buddy got married, they stayed with her parents for about 4 months. They left on Friday evening to go on their honeymoon. They went all the way to Glennville and stayed in the Cherio Motel.

Before they left on Friday, Cheryl’s mom told her they were having Chicken & Dumplings for dinner on Saturday. Her dad told Buddy they would be shooting ducks Saturday evening. The honeymooners were back home by dinner on Saturday. Buddy’s new pajamas were still in the plastic when they unpacked the suitcase.

          As I said they stayed with her parents and Cheryl says they had an unexpected visit from her Aunt and Uncle. Of course they stayed at her parent’s house also. They were all watching Bonanza one night and Buddy whispered to Cheryl about 8 o’clock it was time for them to go to bed. She told him it was practically still daylight and there were people there watching TV. He told her to just turn the TV up and come on to bed.

Everyone wants their children to be well behaved and Buddy was no different. He believed that to spare the rod was to spoil the child. Cheryl says that one day he was spanking Ashley for something he did. He told him that the reason he was spanking him was because he loved him. You know that this will hurt me more than it does you kind of thing. Ashley’s reply was Daddy; I wish you didn’t love me quite that much! 

          If you remember, Buddy was one of the larger guys in our class. Buddy Meeks tells the story that when we were in high school, they tried to get Buddy to go out for football. Buddy told them he couldn’t play because his Mama didn’t want him get hurt.

          Also, concerning Buddy’s large stature one morning at work, one of the guys came running into my office and said—you are not going to believe what I just saw. Well I thought he might have seen a UFO or something but he said “I just saw an S-10 Pickup Truck slam full of Buddy Olliff”.

          People often tell me they would like to be tall like me. Well sometimes it has its disadvantages like when you hit your head on something that most people would miss. Well being large sometimes has its downfalls.  When Adam was about 5, he and Buddy would pick up cans and save them. Cheryl, Adam, & Ashley were out of town one weekend attending a wedding. Buddy stayed home. He was out riding and stopped at a dumpster. He saw a lot of cans in the bottom of the dumpster so he decided to get them for Adam. He poked around with a stick trying to get the cans out. In the process he broke his watch band and it fell into the dumpster. Buddy climbed in which was not a lot of trouble because he used the steps on the outside of the dumpster. It was when he tried to climb out that he knew he was in trouble. Cheryl says that big man and that dumpster went at it for about an hour before he got out.

          Buddy was a big man but most of that was heart. Buddy took that saying about giving some one the shirt off of your back to heart. He lived out the idea of it is better to give than to receive. Every year he planted a big garden and his philosophy was that if he had something to eat, everyone else did as well. He gave away a lot of produce to the neighbors. The Bible says that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves and Buddy Olliff did exactly that.

          The story is told that when Buddy and Jerry Holloway started going to church, the preacher was kidding them about the roof was going to fall in cause they had come to church. They say that a few of the ceiling tiles did literally fall that day. Buddy was always helping out around the church. He cut the grass and kept it clean. He helped with the BBQ chicken suppers to raise money for projects at the church.

          At Buddy’s funeral, they played the cd of the song Wave on Wave.

The story behind that goes something like this. According to Cheryl, Buddy was never technically minded in the field of electronics. Buddy had indicated to his grandson, Zac, that he really liked that song. Being the good grandson that he was, Zac had a cd made of that song and put it in the cd player of Buddy’s truck knowing full well that he probably didn’t know that he even had one much less how to operate it.  After about a week, Buddy told Cheryl and I quote “Cheryl, every time I crank my truck up that song comes on”. Typical Buddy Olliff

          One winter morning when it was really cold outside, Cheryl was going shopping. I mean there was ice on the car windows kind of cold. As she went outside to get in the car, she told Buddy to come get the ice off of the windows. As he comes to the car with a bucket of water to pour on the windshield, she rolls her window down to tell him goodbye and he threw the whole bucket of water into the car on her.

We all have many fond memories of Buddy that we shall cherish for years to come. When the good Lord made Buddy, he threw the mold away. On April 7, 2005, He chose to take Buddy home to be with him. I am sure he is smiling at us tonight. We will miss him until we meet him again in glory but we will always remember Buddy Olliff; Our Friend, Our Classmate, Our Buddy.

  Larry Biggers:

           This is what Larry Biggers has to say about Buddy. Buddy and I were friends from the first day of school (first grade) I believe that he asked me that day to go home with him and spend the night. I probably did not go that night but over the years I spent many a night out at his home in Ollifftown. I thought he and his family must be something special to have a town named after them. Actually they were very special.

        Mr. William Lewis (Buddy's daddy) Mrs. Sybil (Buddy's mother) and Martha Ann (Buddy's sister) treated me as though I were part of their family. I learned in later years that they made everyone feel that way. I will always remember the good times we had together as small boys; Building sling shots, bows an arrows (with feathers and points) rabbit boxes (that really caught rabbits), fishing in the fifteen mile creek (just behind buddy's home) and of course hunting. In later years we worked in the tobacco fields and helped Mr. William Lewis pick produce to take into Metter to sell to the grocery stores. Our friendship lasted during our high school years, playing football together, double dating, and just being friends. My most fond memory of Buddy is his laughter and sense of humor. I never saw him angry or out of control, even though he was always known as someone you could count on when the going got tough. As we all know, in this world a good friend is worth more than any possession that we could have. I miss my friend but I know that our earthly loss is heaven's gain.

My memories of Buddy are many!  Larry Collins:

From Ag days with H B O'Kelly to Industrial Arts with Jessie Albert Durden.

A large part of our Senior year was spent building a picnic shelter that was to be the remembrance to MHS from the Class of '66.  The truth is that no matter what Mr. Durden told us to do we did it wrong so that we would have to redo it.  This was so that we could spend more time outside instead of in the class room.  Buddy, Bobby Edenfield, Ronnie Bragdon, BJ Griffin, myself and several others spent many hours working and reworking on the shelter.

I remember once in Grammar School - I cannot remember which year or what teacher - but I do remember I talked my Daddy into allowing me to ride my motor scooter to school. 

Between my house and school I ran into a light rain shower.  When I got to school I was wet and very late!   The first person I saw when I got to the school yard was Buddy.   I was very worried about being late and getting into trouble with Mr. Crawford.  My friend Buddy wanted to help me out so we talked it over and we decided that I should rub mud all over me and tell the teacher that I had run off of the bridge.  I did!!!   Only she thought I had really had a wreck and gotten hurt. 

I had only run off the bridge onto the pavement and kept on going down the highway.

Also, once when we were playing B Team Football for Coach Durden we were a really good team.  We were winning about every game we played.

Anyway, for some reason Coach Durden could not be at practice and Coach Cook took over for him.  Coach Cook had only been at the school for a short time.  We ran a few plays and he kept telling us what sissies we were and how we were not tough enough to play football.

We talked him into lining up in front of us and letting us run a play. 

Of course Buddy and I had already been in the huddle and talked this over.  We had decided that both of us would hit him at the same time and run over Coach Cook.

Buddy was fullback and I was left halfback, when the ball was centered both of us ran straight for him at the same time.  He got very mad with both of us and shortly afterwards he sent us to the dressing room.

After we graduated Buddy and I were still close over the years. Buddy and Cheryl got married on Friday December 9th, 1966 and Vera and I got married the following Friday.

In 1968 his Ashley and my Chris were born.  When they started to school they were very good friends and that continues today.

In about 1977 when Buddy and I were farming and farming was very bad we carried our tractors to Atlanta to protest.  It was extremely cold that night and we were at a motel outside of McDonough.  After we got to the motel we decided to add antifreeze to all of the tractor tires.  There were so many tractors at the motel and it took so long to work on them that we needed antifreeze for ourselves.  So, after we drank way to much alcohol and it was very late and below freezing one of us smarted off at the other and back and to.  

 I jumped on his back and hit him on the back of his head.   You have to understand that Buddy weighed about 300 + pounds.  He shook me off like a bulldog would shake off a flea.  When he turned around he stepped on my foot and I fell backwards.  When I fell back with him on my foot my foot broke.

Everybody at the motel thought we were very mad with each other and that we would never get over it.  They were "all" wrong.  After I went to the emergency room and got my foot bandaged the next morning Buddy, Cheryl, Vera and I met in the motel restaurant and had breakfast together. 

We laughed about that night many times after that. 

This is what true friends do and Buddy truly was my friend and I miss him

very much. 

Carolyn Collins told about her and Buddy growing up together. She told us that Buddy taught her about football and how to play the game.

Mike Campbell also told stories about him and Buddy. He stated that he could not tell all of them. He told of experiences He and Buddy had in High School and growing up together.