Bushy-browed Bud Doggett went out like a light.
Last Thursday he had lunch downtown with a buddy, stopped by his house in Northwest, D.C., checked the refrigerator, his heart quit, and he collapsed and died, right there on the kitchen floor.
In that instant, Washington, D.C., lost a truly local tycoon who — through grit and love, hard living and generosity — made the nation’s capital a better place to live. I don’t pretend to have been one of Bud Doggett’s many close friends or even a casual acquaintance, but I know that we lost one of our few pillars last week.
If you happened by Saint Patrick’s Church downtown on 10th Street yesterday morning, you might have wondered why the Scottish band members in kilts were readying their bagpipes at 11:45 sharp. Why the Metropolitan Police honor guard was standing in smart salute. Why the mayor and the police chief and the fire chief were following the flag-draped coffin.
Why did this Irish guy who owned parking lots rate a funeral that had all the the pomp and gravity of the passing of a head of state? For the small town that is the nation’s capital, losing Bud Doggett is like saying goodbye to a boss of bosses.
You might not even know his name. He liked it that way. He was that rare, self-made man who didn’t need attaboys from his peers in the form of awards; he didn’t crave headlines. Yet the people he touched and helped knew Bud and loved him for it.
“Bud was always there for someone else,” Monsignor Sal Criscuolo said. “He never wanted recognition.”
Take the cops, whose blue and brown uniforms and badges filled Saint Patrick’s pews. In 1964 Doggett founded HEROES, Inc., a charity that cares for the families of cops or firemen killed in the line of duty. HEROES is helping the 192 dependents of the 157 deceased officers and fire fighters pay for college and more. Yet nowhere in the group’s literature is Doggett mentioned.
Bud Doggett was born in 1920 at 21st and K, an Irish neighborhood at the time. His friends and enemies were Italians and Greeks in the city’s ethnic stew. His father owned a few parking lots, and Bud grew up parking cars and taking fees. He went to Georgetown Prep, skipped college and went to war in Europe, where he served under General George Patton.
He came home to buy corners and build a parking empire that minted money.
“A promise and a handshake from Bud was as good as any contract written,” his wife, Cherrie, told his gathered friends yesterday. His watchword: “Friendship is to be tested regularly.”
He resisted leaving his home town. “Oh, no,” he would say, “I don’t cross the Potomac Ocean.”
Doggett is one of the last of Washington’s Runyonesque characters who made good things happen by force of wealth and personal power — folks like Blackie Augur and Bob Linowes and Walter Washington.
“It’s a different world,” said Jack Evans, as Doggett’s procession rounded the corner. “We don’t have many more larger than life figures.”
