FORT MITCHELL — Over the past decade, residents of Lucerne Avenue watched the solitary figure make his daily half-mile walk to Highland Cemetery to lay carnations at his mother's grave.

Jennifer Charlton changes flowers at Buzzy Ernst's grave. (Patrick Reddy photo) | ZOOM |

        Slope-shouldered, the elderly man had stubble on his face. His stringy black hair was streaked with gray, and he carried plastic bags filled with flowers and grass clippers. No matter what the season, he wore several layers of clothing.

        Arthur “Buzzy” Ernst exchanged pleasantries with neighborhood children who approached him; but he always declined offers from adults of a car ride, even in the snow or pouring rain.

        But the quiet stranger who refused offers of help when he was alive has left a bequest of $291,000 to help others. When his estate was settled this spring, Buzzy's gift went to Senior Services of Northern Kentucky, which provides dozens of services to older adults.

Ernst

        It also brought to light so much more about the man known as Buzzy — a Big Band musician who had hocked his saxophone when he left New York City for his native Covington to care for his ailing mother.

        Mary Ellis, development director of Senior Services of Northern Kentucky, said, “He was probably the kind of guy you would have walked by quickly and not given a second thought to. But look at what he's done, and the impact it'll have for years to come.”

Flowers every day

        At Art Floral in Fort Mitchell, where Buzzy stopped two or three times a week to purchase red or burgundy carnations, employees remember him as a kindly, politically astute man.

Ernst played with an unidentified band in 1956. | ZOOM |

        “He lived like he didn't have a dime,” said Mary Joan Ware, owner of Art Floral. “To look at him, you'd never know that he had any money.”

        But the man who took the bus everywhere and lived in one room of his modest, two-story home on Covington's Holman Avenue did have money.

        Last September, on her first day as executive director of Senior Services of Northern Kentucky, Barbara Gunn learned he had left her organization its second-largest bequest ever — $291,000. Proceeds from the estate, which was final in April, will go into an endowment that the agency plans to grow to $5 million. The interest it earns will support the agency's operations.

        “The endowment will be an insurance policy for when we have shortfalls in funding,” Ms. Ellis said.

        Professional musician

        Those who knew the reclusive man only from seeing him on the street learned an even more surprising fact.

        Before leaving New York City 12 years ago to care for his mother, Buzzy had been a professional saxophone player. Based primarily in New York, the Covington native had spent most of his life on the road, traveling from coast to coast with as many as 10 dance bands.

        During the height of the Big Band era, every town of any size had a ballroom, and hundreds of traveling bands provided entertainment.

        Buzzy worked with band leaders including Tommy Allan, Buddy Bair, Ronnie Bartley, Russ Carlyle, George Doerner, Dan Hudson, Teddy Phillips and Ted Weems.

        Only child, loner

        An only child with no immediate family when he died Sept. 7, Buzzy received Christmas cards from former President Bill Clinton, yet the only survivor listed in his obituary was his lawyer, Jim Dressman III.

About Senior Services of Northern Kentucky

• What it is: Senior Services provides more than a dozen services to residents over age 60 in eight Northern Kentucky counties, including Boone, Kenton and Campbell, to help them stay in their own homes. Services include meals, adult day care, community education, transportation to the grocery and doctor appointments, and protection from abuse.   • Where: Senior centers are in Florence, Walton, Bellevue, Newport, Warsaw, Williamstown, Elsmere, Ludlow, Covington, Owenton and Falmouth.   • To donate: Tax-deductible gifts can be made to Senior Services of Northern Kentucky, 1032 Madison Ave., Covington, Ky. 41011. Write “remembrance fund” on the check. Gifts can be made in honor of a family member or other individual.

        “Buzzy was very much a loner, a man of very few words,” Mr. Dressman said. “... He couldn't have cared less about material things. He was more issue-driven.”

        When he died, Buzzy's worn wallet was bulging with cards from more than a dozen charities and political groups he'd given money to — everything from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Doris Day Animal League to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

        “He was spiritual in his own way, although he had no affiliation to any organized religious group,” Mr. Dressman said. “When his mother died, she left him some money, and he wanted to do something good. He looked at about 15 different charities before he settled on senior services.”

        Mr. Dressman said he thinks Buzzy “very much identified with the homebound elderly.”

        A prolific letter writer, he corresponded several times a month with friends throughout the country and often shared his political views on the editorial pages of newspapers from New York to Cincinnati.

        In Buzzy's view, Richard Nixon should have been impeached; O.J. Simpson was probably innocent of murder but guilty of bad grammar; and Kentucky's congressmen should have done more to fight proposed budget cuts in '95 that threatened the bus service he depended on to get around.

Musicians remember

        Frank Fielder Simpson, who played in a couple of bands with Buzzy in the '60s, was among dozens of friends who regularly received his letters.

        “I think his mother encouraged his career,” Mr. Simpson said. “He often told me that in his younger years he and his mother visited different places around Cincinnati to hear Big Bands.”

        Jeanne Carroll, who met Buzzy when she was the lead singer for the Tommy Allan Band, carried on an 18-year correspondance with him.

        “He loved music,” she said. “The music business was his life. He also was very devoted to his mother.”

        On Oct. 19, 1989, Buzzy — then working for a messenger service after dance bands had waned in popularity — left his one-room apartment on Manhattan's West Side, and boarded a bus for Covington, upon learning that his mother had suffered a series of strokes.

        Seven months later, Buzzy was at his 78-year-old mother's hospital bedside, when Ella Mae Bray died of a heart attack.

        “I can hardly believe that she'll never be here with me again,” he wrote his former bandmate, Mr. Simpson, in a November 1990 letter. “There hasn't been a day that I haven't cried and cried. I go to the cemetery almost every day taking city buses and put fresh flowers on her grave.”

        In Covington, the man who fellow musicians had once described as “a show business kind of guy,” rarely ventured from his home. The alto sax and clarinet that had provided Buzzy's livelihood for more than 30 years were left behind in a New York pawn shop.

Feeling ill

        In March 2000, Buzzy confided to Mr. Simpson that he worried he “might be very sick.” He had a persistent cold in his chest and he was feeling weak.

        “In three stores where I go daily, clerks have said I should see a doctor and one gave me the name and address of one where I wouldn't need an appointment,” he wrote.

        Two weeks later, Buzzy wrote that he'd had the first of nine radiation and chemotherapy treatments to fight inoperable cancer of the bile duct.

        By chance, Mary Jo Counts, who'd come to know Buzzy through her regular walks in Highland Cemetery, ran into him last spring, when he was undergoing physical therapy at St. Elizabeth Medical Center North.

        The Fort Mitchell woman told her friend and fellow walker, Chris Bruewer, of Buzzy's illness, and the two vowed he wouldn't spend his final days alone.

        When Buzzy was moved to Newport's Baptist Convalescent Center last June, Mrs. Bruewer, the family life minister at Blessed Sacrament Church, turned Buzzy into a school project. Dozens of pupils in the parochial school's upper grades sent him homemade greeting cards and riddles.

        “Gracious man”

        As word spread of Buzzy's illness, some of the Fort Mitchell residents who'd met him during his cemetery visits took turns tending to his mother's grave. Still others stopped by the nursing home for visits.

        “For a loner, it was amazing how many people his life touched,” Mrs. Bruewer said. “Everybody kind of adopted him.”

        At the convalescent center, residents and staff gradually drew Buzzy out of his room with the lure of a bowling league, trips to Cincinnati landmarks, and a visiting jazz trio.

        “Once you met him, he was a very gracious man,” said Donna VanLeeuwe, a resident and former professional singer who often discussed music with Buzzy. “We pulled him out of his shell bit by bit.”

        Unlike the days when he lived alone, Buzzy once again took pride in his appearance, trimming his hair regularly and stopping in front of mirrors to tuck in his shirt or check his appearance.

        While Buzzy “did nothing to reach out to others, he had an aura that drew people to him,” recalled Suzanne Kelly, the social worker at the convalescent center who gave his eulogy.

        Carole Goetz, the floral designer who'd often sold him flowers, now visits the cemetery at least once a week, keeping with a promise she made to Buzzy during one of his last visits.

        “He always worried that when he died, there'd be no one to put flowers on his mother's grave,” she said. “I said, "Buzzy, whenever I can, I'll put flowers on her grave for you.' He cried.”

        Still others regret that they didn't get to know Buzzy better.

        “If you think about it, there are probably a lot of Buzzies in our lives,” Mrs. Wise said. “Everybody knew who he was, but no one really knew him.”

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