‘Everybody wants a Grandpa Buzz’

SNOHOMISH — It’s 8:15 a.m., and the Grandpa Buzz squad is on the move.

Amid the morning bustle, 88-year-old Buzz Upton strides along with kids and parents headed to Cascade View Elementary. It’s pajama day at school, but Upton — wearing a crisp plaid shirt, “Buzz” baseball jacket, USS Coral Sea Navy cap and cowboy boots — has been up and dressed for hours. Even after a night of dancing, he walks with the energy of someone half his age.

On weekdays, Upton drives 40 minutes from his home in Stanwood to walk his 10-year-old great-granddaughter, Teagan, to school. The daily walk started in 2019 with her older sister Stella, 12.

“Everybody wants a Grandpa Buzz,” said Shannon Richards, his granddaughter and the girls’ mom.

Around Cascade View, nearly everyone knows him. Some kids wait along the sidewalk for one of his signature hugs.

“How are you this morning?” he greets one student.

“Have a super day,” he tells another.

Absent from the morning crew this year is Stella, a middle schooler who now rides the bus. Grandpa Buzz was there on her first day, holding a sign to cheer her on:

“Welcome to 7th grade, Stella and friends. You’ve got this! Have a great year!”

He has two more years of walking with Teagan before she moves on. By then, he’ll be 90.

Until recently, Grandpa Buzz’s morning walks were a quiet, local ritual. That changed with a Facebook post by the Snohomish School District in September.

“He became quite the viral social media sensation,” Kristin Foley, district spokesperson, wrote in an email. “As of today, that post has been viewed more than 142,000 times.”

Upton isn’t chasing likes — quite the opposite.

“I got too much attention,” he said. “Oh, I’m famous. Great.”

He knows what Facebook is, but doesn’t use it. No time. No interest.

What matters is showing up.

Rain, traffic or cold, Grandpa Buzz is there.

“Sometimes it can take a half hour just to get five miles,” he said of the morning 25-mile commute from Stanwood.

He goes to volleyball games, cheering on his great-grandkids in Monroe or wherever their schedules take him.

“I look at him and I’m like, ‘I’m tired. How are you not tired?’” said neighbor Jess Caskey, who walks her daughter Indy, 10, with the Grandpa Buzz crew. “And he’ll be like, ‘By the way, I went out dancing last night until midnight.’”

Upton, a widower, has a sprawling family: 13 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.

He’d walk them all to school if he could.

“Most are out of state now,” he said.

His school involvement stretches back decades.

Back when Upton built houses for a living, he’d swing by the school on breaks, just to visit his grandkids.

“He would surprise us and come sing happy birthday with a bouquet of flowers,” Richards recalled.

“I used to go in the school, walk around and sit in their classes,” he said. “You can’t do that anymore.”

Now he focuses on small gestures that make a big difference: a high-five, a compliment, a connection.

“He tries to get everybody to come out of their shell in the morning when they don’t want to talk,” Caskey said.

Jessica Miller and her daughter Serenity, 8, time their walk to meet him near the school.

“They exchange Valentines,” Miller said.

“He’s just really nice,” Serenity added. “And he gives me hugs.”

Upton has noticed a shift.

“It used to be mostly the girls who’d say hi,” he said. “Now, it’s everybody.”

“I love your cowboy boots,” he tells a student wearing boots and a nightgown.

His real name is Otis, but everyone knows him as Buzz.

“My older brother, when I was born he couldn’t say ‘brother,’ so I was ‘Buzzer,’” Upton explained.

It stuck.

After drop-off, Grandpa Buzz becomes just plain Buzz again. He heads back to Stanwood, sometimes straight into yard work, sometimes up onto the roof.

“I’ve got a lot of moss and a lot of trees,” he said. “I try to keep busy.”

Contact writer Andrea Brown at reporterbrown@gmail.com.