OYSTERVILLE — Edwin R. “Bud” Goulter Jr. died in his home at the base of Stackpole (formerly Goulter) Road on the morning of Saturday, May 14, 2022, after a long battle with abdominal cancer. He was three months shy of his 95th birthday.

Born Aug. 17, 1927, in the outskirts of Oysterville, Bud was the only child of Edwin and Gladys (Kistemaker) Goulter.

Goulters have been prominent in this part of the country since the mid-1800s. Bud’s second-great-grandfather, Dr. James R. Johnson, was the Willapa Bay area’s first physician, and his daughter Lydia married Osborn Goulter, Bud’s great-grandfather. The Goulters descended from them were respected cattlemen, dairy farmers, and butchers in Oysterville and up Stackpole Road. Great-grandfather Osborn, grandfather Theophilus, and uncle Lester Goulter also operated Oysterville’s thriving beef canning business for decades.

Bud received primary education in the Oysterville School but soon began making his own way, working in the Andrews Garage and shucking oysters to start, and then spending large portions of his life as a logger and log-truck driver on the Oregon coast and around Redding, California, and as a long-haul trucker, carrying Willapa Bay oysters to Portland and anywhere he could sell them. His tales of fist fights at the ‘Bloody Bucket’ Tavern near Raymond, of close calls with cougars and bears, and of hair-raising adventures in the early days of mechanized logging will be familiar to anyone who spent much time with him, for Bud was a skilled and unstoppable storyteller.

Throughout his life, he was deeply proud of his American Indian heritage. His grandfather Theophilus Goulter married Maggie Cloquet, of Cowlitz and French descent, and Bud identified as a Native American, participating in Cowlitz pow-wows as a tribal member and World War II veteran who served in Japan in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Bud married twice: to Jo O’Shaughnessey, with whom he had sons Tommy, Gerry, and Phillip (who pre-deceased him), and when this marriage ended in divorce, to Dorothea (Sherry) Burnett, who lived with him until her death in 2013. Bud and Sherry’s home became a gathering place for friends both old and new.

Bud was a passionate man and a “people person” who made lasting friendships quickly because he listened attentively to what they had to say and would remember it in astounding detail. He had an extremely warm heart, but he was complex and could be irate and contentious as well, a man of many grievances. Whether you were on good terms with him or not, Bud Goulter was likely to be among the most memorable people you’d encountered, and will be sorely missed.

Survivors include two sons, Thomas Edwin Goulter of Vancouver, Wash. and Gerald Lee Goulter (wife Debra) of Cottonwood, Calif.; grandchildren, Thomas Joseph Goulter (wife Leah) of Centerburg, Ohio, Jessica Lynn Goulter of Cottonwood California and First Sgt. Jason Philip Goulter USMC (retired) (wife Hazel) of Robinson, Texas; great-grandchildren, Jordan, Chloe, Jackson, Deacon, Layla, Ilana and Kason.

The Oysterville Community Club, of which he and Sherry were proud lifelong members, will hold a potluck Commemoration of Life in his honor in the School House he attended, on Saturday, June 18 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., to which all who knew him are invited.

As Bud would always say: ”Let me live in the house by the side of the road and be a friend to man.”