Senior Hillsdale resident receives lifetime theater award

Home Culture Senior Hillsdale resident receives lifetime theater award
Senior Hillsdale resident receives lifetime theater award
Senior Hillsdale resident 89-year-old Bud Vear was awarded the Robert E. Gard Superior Volunteer award from the American Association of Community Theatre for his lifetime contributions to community theater. Here he acts in “The Annual Check-up,” a one-act play he wrote for the Sauk Theatre. Expressions Photography and Design | Courtesy
Senior Hillsdale resident 89-year-old Bud Vear was awarded the Robert E. Gard Superior Volunteer award from the American Association of Community Theatre for his lifetime contributions to community theater. Here he acts in “The Annual Check-up,” a one-act play he wrote for the Sauk Theatre. Expressions Photography and Design | Courtesy

From taking out the trash to producing musicals, 89-year-old Hillsdale resident Bud Vear has poured countless hours of service into the Sauk Theatre for more than four decades. In February, the American Association of Community Theatre awarded him the Robert E. Gard Superior Volunteer award for his efforts. The organization will present Vear with the award at its New York conference on July 9.

The national organization annually gives this award to several members older than 65 who have faithfully served community theater for more than 25 years. Executive Director of the Sauk, Trinity Bird, said he nominated Vear to honor his service to the Sauk Theatre.

“Dr. Vear has been with the theater since the ’70s,” Bird said. “His first show with this group was the first show that they ever did in the Sauk building, and he’s been here ever since.”

“We call him our patriarch, because he is,” he added. “He’s just a great guy. It’s one of those things where I feel like we cannot say enough how much he means to us.”

Vear said he learned to love theater from his father, who performed with the drama club in his hometown of Wheaton, Illinois, and did USO entertainment during World War I. Vear first encountered theater when his father took him to performances of “South Pacific” and “Harvey.”

Although he did not participate much in theater during college and high school, he said he continued attending various theater productions.

After getting his medical degree, Vear moved his family to Hillsdale, where he worked as a doctor for 24 years, 20 of them at the Ambler Health and Wellness Center of Hillsdale College. When the Vears moved here, they discovered the Hillsdale Community Theater, which now performs in the Sauk Theatre.

“They did their performances at the fairgrounds in the women’s congress building,” he said. “It was a very inadequate facility — very small stage, folding chairs, posts that you had to look around to see the stage, no dressing room, no backstage, and no bathrooms. I thought, ‘Let’s check it out. I like theater, maybe they can do something.’”

“We went down there and saw ‘The Odd Couple,’ a classic,” he added. “It was wonderful. In spite of the facilities, the performance was marvelous. So we went to a meeting, and one of the members was doing a demonstration on stage makeup, and it was terrific.”

Aside from the occasional grade-school talent show, Vear had only acted in one other play before his first performance with Hillsdale Community Theatre,  a production of “Fantasticks” in 1970.

He joined the cast last-minute, and played the role of a mute man.

“It’s a six-person cast with a simple little love story, but it has fantastic music,” Vear said. “One of the parts was the mute, and that’s the part I got. Never had a line. Never missed a line. I really didn’t start out as a mute — the lead dropped out a few weeks before the performance, so the guy who played the mute took his spot, so that was my first involvement onstage here.”

After that, Vear and his wife, Gloria, became more and more  involved in the theater, eventually becoming board members. Over the years, he has acted in several productions, despite his tendency toward behind-the-scene roles. Vear acted in and produced “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” played Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” and Norman in “On Golden Pond.” Over the years, he has also written a number of the short plays included in the Sauk Theatre’s annual Festival of One-Acts.

Bud and Gloria Vear were instrumental in initiating the move to the Sauk Theatre’s current building. When the city put the building up, the Vears convinced the board to place a bid and helped organize the fundraising efforts that yielded around $6,500.

Bird said Vear also played a major role in restoring the Sauk after a fire gutted the theater’s interior.

“He’s contributed so much, but the first big thing he did was when the building had a fire in 1979,” he said. “It was a massive fire, and Bud spearheaded the campaign to rebuild through fundraising.”

Gloria Vear, his wife, said Bud has contributed his lifetime of wisdom to board discussions.

“The reason why he has been involved, and why they want him on the board, is because he’s a leveler,” she said. “He listens, and he gives great wisdom. They get all riled up about something, and then he calms them down, and gives them food for thought.”

In 2011, Vear wrote a 150-page book outlining the history of the Sauk Theatre from its origins as an opera house in 1905 to the present day. In it, he recounts the events that led up to ownership of the building by the Hillsdale Community Theatre, and each of the productions the group has done since then.

When he’s not producing or acting in a show,

Vear said he enjoys attending other amateur theater productions in the area.

“I almost like community theater better than professional theater,” he said. “I remember going down to Toledo to see ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ and it was a professional group. Frankly, we were disappointed because he never let go, he never boomed out the songs. Why? Because he couldn’t. In community theater, we do it for two weekends, eight performances. There’s no reason to hold back.”

Vear said he appreciates the Hillsdale Community Theatre’s endurance as an organization, which has survived its share of rough patches.

”That’s the value of community theater,” he said. “Yes, I like to get onstage, and yes, I enjoy watching the productions, but mostly I am just so thrilled that we have this organization that has continued to function through all these years.”

Groups like this provide a venue for community participation in theater, which Vear said has been instrumental in his own life and allowed him to make a difference to others.

“I’ve discovered that there are three things in life that you need to be happy,” he said. “You need someone to love, you need something to do, and you need something to hope for. And theater fulfills those last two — something to do, and something to hope for.”