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Monday, May 02, 2005

a formal feeling comes--

I bought beer and cigarettes from this woman for years on end. when they tell you that Brazilian women have ***, believe it. I wish you could have met her.
7-Eleven clerk revered in life, death

"Customers often gave Onelia Budge a ride to work. Now, a month after her death, a store tribute remains in her honor."

When customers spotted 7-Eleven clerk Onelia Budge walking to work from her nearby apartment, they regularly offered her a ride. In the month since her death, many have stopped to sign a memorial at the store where she worked.

Mrs. Budge's husband, Jasper, is surprised that the tribute, initially set up by employees and refreshed by his daughter and a friend, has not been taken down.

"I thought it would be all gone by now," he said.

But he couldn't know. Budge, 73, said it has been too painful for him to visit the store across from the Albertsons supermarket on 31st Street S.

"I miss her," he said.

She was well-liked, Budge said. Ken Venzera, manager of the store at 5451 31st St. S, agreed.

"It's just the way she treated people and talked to people. She was so well-known in the neighborhood. A customer would drive her to work almost every day," Venzera said.

"Once you meet her, you could never forget her."

Mrs. Budge generally worked the 2-to-10 p.m. shift. She was a good employee, the manager said.

"She was 72 years old, and she worked harder than the 22-year-old kids," he said.

"We loved her and miss her so much."

Mrs. Budge came to the United States from Brazil in 1958. She and her husband, whom she met when he was managing a restaurant in Miami, had been married for 37 years. It was her second marriage. She had two sons from her first marriage and a daughter from her second. She died at home from lung cancer on March 22.

"She liked to smoke a cigarette. I figured that she would quit, but she never quit," her husband said.

"I think she knew she was going to die, but she didn't want to die in the hospital. She died at peace. She had no pain."
[Last modified April 27, 2005, 00:48:18].
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE, Times Staff Writer
Published April 27, 2005 ST. PETERSBURG -


Many a time I had a few words with her out side the store while she was on break smoking. She seems to have survived quite a few managers. And I'm glad that the 'shrine' at the store has her sitting at a table smoking like to stab me in the heart. "One ninety two," She drawled in her thick accent. The last thing she said to me was, "thank you dear."

Gonna miss you when I'm gone.

2 comments:

  1. Harry,You're right,
    I haven deen in that store for quite a while, so i didn;t know that she'd passed. and the 'shrine' is just a paper that all kinds of people have signed. I always guessed that she was european, by her thick accent. I'm afraid that i underestimated the efeect that she had on other people. I thought that she could have been anyone in her youth and I wondered what circumstance might have brought her to St Pete.

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  2. She was my mother and came she came here to the US to get married. She was the greatest lady in the world and is missed terribly. I have started a facebook page for her under Onelia Budge. Can you believe this woman had a degree in letters, kinda of like a degree in language. She was brilliant and I'm not being biased she really was.

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