Melvin “Buddy” Eckart was a man of faith and family who had an indomitable spirit and a penchant for country line dancing.

Listen

Transcript

I am Alger Eckhart. I was married to Melvin Eckhart, better known as Buddy Eckhart for 44 years. Unfortunately, he passed away but he lived a wonderful, joyful life. When he was well in the last 15 months of his life, when he fought cancer, the first thing he would usually say every morning was, okay, what do I have to do to see tomorrow?

 His passion from the time he was a little boy was dancing, and we always enjoyed dancing as well. So after our children left us empty nesters, we joined a group called The Countryside Kickers and we became Country Line and couples dancers. My husband loved it. He loved to teach other people how to dance. I think he enjoyed moving his body and expressing his joy by moving his body. I think God is very much about music and dancing and he was, very connected to God and we’ve always enjoyed that passion of dancing. but I also think that you are born with a certain personality and self-confidence when you’re on that dance floor that allows you the freedom of just letting your body do what you like to do, move it to the music.

He loved music. He could, um, tell you every. Record recording and the artists going back to the forties and the fifties, if there was a song playing, oh, that’s so and so, and that was during this era. He just had a passion for music and, and dance and life.

He had a passion for dancing and a smile so big that everybody knew he was loving what he was doing when he was out there. And I can’t tell you how many people have said that Bud got made a dance, gave him the confidence to stay out there, to do the dance, and then follow him. In fact, there was a couple dances and he used to have a following.

He would do his own thing and a dance would come on, and there would be a group of people that followed him around the floor to do these dances, and everybody would just join in because it looked like fun and they wanted to have fun.

What amazed our friends and fellow dancers was that he kept the energy going and even though he was the so-called ill one out there, he was still on the dance floor more than the rest of us who were healthy. He was always the first one on the dance floor and the last one to leave.