Robert Bufe: Former Colleyville fire chief laid to rest

Robert Bufe spent his career around fire trucks, so it was fitting that his last ride was in one. Mr. Bufe, who was a longtime Grapevine firefighter and Colleyville’s first paid fire chief, died Friday of what his family said were complications of west Nile virus. He was 75.

Area firefighters honored Mr. Bufe on Wednesday by placing his casket on the back of a 1957 International pumper, which carried the casket to his grave.

“Robert actually served on that truck,” said Mark Ashmead, a Grapevine Fire Department division chief who served with Mr. Bufe. “We ran many calls together. Robert did it all.”

One of three children, Robert Glen Bufe, was born Aug. 24, 1934, in Priddy to Rinhart and Minnie Bufe. When he was about 12, the family moved from Mills County to Coppell, where his dad was a carpenter. Mr. Bufe graduated from Carrollton High School, served as a private in the Army in Germany, returned to Texas to become a trim carpenter and eventually became a volunteer firefighter.

Once he became a paid chief, Mr. Bufe not only headed the department but also helped frame the new City Hall/firehouse.

“He was a jack of all trades,” said his wife, Martha Bufe, adding that Mr. Bufe didn’t receive extra pay for construction work. “It didn’t bother him. He loved it.”

Mr. Bufe served in Colleyville from 1970 to 1975 when he moved to the Grapevine Fire Department, where a friend was boss and the money was better, his wife said. Although he had been a chief, Mr. Bufe was content to work as a firefighter.

“We called him Buff for short,” said Ashmead, who served with Mr. Bufe from 1981 to 1998, when Mr. Bufe retired. “We had plenty of excitement — working wrecks, being on the fire boat out at the lake.

“We’d go in together on the hose line. He was one of the generation who got to ride on the back of the truck.”

Mr. Bufe was buried next to his son Robert Wayne Bufe, who died in 1976 at age 18 in a training accident when he was a volunteer Colleyville firefighter. The fire station near their graves is named for Robert Bufe, Ashmead said.

Although Mr. Bufe had been in good health, he never returned home after he was rushed to the hospital Aug. 10.

“On Friday, that was his day to mow the yard,” Martha Bufe said. “On Monday, he couldn’t even stand up. It was a real mystery to those doctors. They tapped his spine, and it came out west Nile.

“He could have lost his life in a fire, but a dadgummed mosquito took his life.”

Vanassa Joseph, spokeswoman for Tarrant County Public Health., said Mr. Bufe was one of 29 west Nile cases reported in the county in 2009. The agency is still investigating whether to add his death to the official tally of two west Nile-associated deaths confirmed this year, she said.

Other survivors include son Kevin Bufe; daughter Melissa Gonzales; four grandchildren; and a brother.
By John Austin, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram