James Loran Chandler's Obituary
James Loran Chandler aka “Bud”
Bud was born to James and Flossie Chandler in Springfield, Missouri on February 1, 1927, but very quickly they moved to Tulsa, OK with Bud’s older sister Helen. The four of them created a nice family where James worked as a fry cook, then a laborer, and became an auto mechanic and Flossie made a nice home, sewed their clothes, and made home cooked meals every day. They lived in several houses around the Admiral and Lewis area.
Bud’s given name at birth was James Loran and his dad’s name was James Stephen, so to avoid two James, his family and friends all called him Buddy. Buddy attended neighborhood schools Whittier Elementary School and Cleveland Junior High School with all the other kids in the neighborhood. After school all the kids were often found playing Kick the Can and Stick Ball in the streets. People didn’t move around as much back then, and many of the kids remained lifetime friends.
At Central High School downtown Tulsa, a favorite class of Buddy’s was his drafting class and his teachers said he excelled in it. He wrestled on the high school team and won many honors and metals including the State Championship. Every afternoon when he left Central High to go down to the wrestling practice gym, the boys had to check out at the side door. There was always someone sitting at a table marking who was leaving. More often than not it was a cute little red headed girl. After many days and weeks of saying, “See ya, Red,” Buddy was quite smitten with that young lady he later found out was Virginia Mattoon, known to all as Jenny.
However his senior year, the war was firing up. Like many of the young men, Buddy and his friend Bill wanted to go fight to defend their country. However, being such a smart young child, Buddy was promoted ahead a grade in elementary school, making him one of the youngest in his class. So while Buddy was willing to head off to war at sixteen, he first had to get his mother’s signature to permit him to join.
During their senior year Buddy and Bill went downtown to sign up for the Marines. They were told by the recruiters that currently there were enough Marines, but the Navy needed men. So they enlisted in the Navy into active duty, but were immediately put on inactive duty for a few months until they graduated high school.
June was a whirlwind. They graduated and that week they reported for duty. Bud and Bill rode a bus together from Tulsa to San Diego for their training where they were assigned to different units. They didn’t see each other for the next two years while they both fought the war from different ships. Bud was aboard the Wichita Heavy Cruiser 9 as a fire control man, a range finder, and advanced to Coxswain rank 3rd class, similar to Sargent. He got a pay raise to $21 a month as they took one island at a time in the South Pacific. When the war was over, men were coming home, and Bud was back in San Diego in June of 1946. Hundreds of men were told to stand with their units in a big field and await orders for discharge. After standing there for most of the day, hot and tired, Buddy looked across the field and said, “I think there’s ole Bill.” He hadn’t seen him for two years, but they were discharged on the same day and rode the bus home together to Tulsa.
Buddy came back and worked with his Dad as an auto mechanic for a year, also sold Hoover vacuum sweepers door to door, and finally took a job at American Airlines. He started working at the original small Tulsa airport in American Airlines Fleet Service, servicing the planes while loading and unloading luggage and passengers when planes arrived and departed. This was when passengers walked across the runway and climbed the stairs to load the plane.
Bud worked his way up through many positions and when the new Tulsa International Airport was built, he worked inside in operations, keeping maintenance schedules and routing the planes so they would always fly a route with passengers to arrive at the servicing airport when it was time for a mandatory servicing. It was a stressful job because it was financially important that they did not have to fly an empty plane to be serviced before it could fly passengers again.
At 57, American Airlines was relocating lots of their employees from Tulsa to Dallas. Buddy and Jenny, (oh yeah, did I forget to tell you that he married that little red head? More about that in a minute.) decided they didn’t really want to move since all their extended family lived in Tulsa, so Bud was offered an early retirement and left the airlines. Bud went on to work as Project Manager for an architect building churches, Git n Go convenience stores, and other buildings around Tulsa. He was a jack-of-all- trades and could do most of the skills required in building, so he was a very ‘hands-on’ project manager and worked closely with all the sub-contractors. He spent his days for years on job sites making sure everything went smoothly.
But Buddy’s life wasn’t all work, when he came back from the war, he married Jenny. Bud bought his first car, an old Studebaker and together they bought their first house. It was one of the hundreds and hundreds of two-bedroom, A-frame houses that were built for all the GIs returning from the war. They had a daughter Linda, seven years later another daughter Nita, and five years later, finally a son James Warren, who is called Jim since there were already two other James in the family. Jim went on to have a son whom he named, you guessed it, James Marquis.
Bud has twelve grandchildren. Most of them live in the Tulsa area, but there are a couple in Texas and one in New York. They include a professional photographer, financial analyst, fashion designer, banker, lawyer, media advertising specialist, software developers, administrators, and teachers. Together they have raised fourteen great grand children, and two great, great, grandchildren.
Bud was always a “good ole boy” and a good buddy to have, thus the name Buddy was very appropriate. A friend to everyone, he always helped everyone in the family with their house projects. He has wallpapered rooms in almost everyone’s house that he knows. But it wasn’t until he was 40 that he got serious about accepting Christ as his Savior. When he did, he jumped into everything he could do to help his church. He worked on the building program when they built a new church building, became an Elder in his church, and he and Jenny worked side-by-side setting up and decorating for hundreds of weddings over the years. He was a youth sponsor for all the high
school kids for many years and the kids all called him Uncle Bud. Today hundreds of people, young and old, still call him Uncle Bud.
After being married 63 years Jenny died of cancer. In her last 15 years Bud took her to every doctor’s appointment and was by her side at every hospitalization. He knew what it is like to be a constant caregiver.
Being single for the first time, Bud decided to take up some new activities. He bowled for a year, and then started going to the Monday night dances at the Broken Arrow Senior Center. After a year of dancing with all the ladies that attended, Bud found there was one lady that he enjoyed the most. The next year Bud married his new dance partner Barbara. They both were healthy and loved dancing together for a year. But soon Barbara developed cancer and they had to slow down and Bud was back to being a caregiver. Barbara died four years after they were married.
For the last 51 years Bud lived by TU on 6th Street where his neighbors lovingly called him the ‘Mayor of 6th Street’ because he knew everyone on the street and was friendly to all and tried to welcome each one and brighten their day as he saw them in the neighborhood. Bud sold that house last year with all the memories attached to it and moved into Morada Senior Independent Living to begin a new chapter in his life. He met many new friends and continued to brighten the lives of many folks. When you saw his blue eyes, you always saw a smile on his face. His favorite pass-time was to tease people, and make people smile and be happy. And he was pretty good at it.
For those that cannot attend the service in person, webcasting is available at the following link: https://webcast.funeralvue.com/events/viewer/83908/hash:7645B9D06E4DE53D
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