Fond du Lac resident Bud Caldwell says it truly was a remarkable act of kindness when you think of it. Every day the 82 year old Caldwell visits a bench near the Lakeside Park train station dedicated to his wife Betty who died almost two years ago. Every day Bud says he reports and confesses to his wife and leaves a daisy and a penny on the bench. Caldwell says “A Daisy a Day” was their favorite song and when she was a little girl, “Pennies from Heaven” was Betty’s favorite song. But Caldwell says when it snows he couldn’t make it to the bench and instead would sit in his car. “Last year I tried walking through the snow and I fell down, and I got up and went back to my car and I didn’t try that anymore,” Caldwell told AM 1170 WFDL’s Between the Lines program. Caldwell says he couldn’t believe it when he learned that two city parks employees had shoveled a path for him. “A city truck pulled up across the street and these two young men got out and one stuck his hand out and said , ‘Hi I’m Jerrod.’ The other stuck his hand out and said ‘I’m Kevin.” Jerrod Ebert says he and fellow parks employee Kevin Schultz noticed Caldwell almost every day while they were making their rounds. Ebert says they also saw one day after it snowed that Caldwell’s path to the bench was blocked. “That started to pull at the heart strings,” Ebert said. “We knew he visited every day and there’s a snow bank in his way and he still came. He was in his car, probably talking in his car.” Ebert and Schultz say they will continue to plow a path for Caldwell every time it snows. Caldwell says he will continue to visit the park every day to give his beloved wife of 56 years a daisy.
