Bud Etherton, 95, passed away on March 4, 2026, at Wake Robin, a continuing care retirement community in Shelburne, Vt.
Bud had a smile that reached his warm, brown eyes and had the effect of cheering up most people. He was a soft-spoken man, but he might draw you into conversation about one of his favorite topics. Science or oil painting perhaps, or maybe poetry, or how to sharpen a crosscut saw.
He was a professor in the University of Vermont (UVM) Botany Department for 30 years, and his research work with colleagues and graduate students meant a great deal to him. After retiring at age 68, Bud found he missed the purpose and camaraderie of working in a lab. In his seventies, he returned to work part time in the lab of Dr. Mark Nelson at the UVM Medical School’s Department of Pharmacology.
Bud was a loving son, brother, husband, father, uncle and brother-in-law. He valued time with his friends and family, working, playing and learning. He took drawing and painting classes and created vibrant still lifes, portraits and landscapes. He appreciated poetry, particularly the poems of Robert Frost, and took part in a haiku poetry writing group later in life.
Bud was born in 1930 in Wardner, Idaho, to Lewis Washington Etherton and Hannah Sutton Etherton. He was the youngest of four children, looking up to his brothers Dan, Bill and Jack, who ranged from 10 to 15 years older than him. The family ultimately settled in a small community known as Pine Creek, on the West Fork of Pine Creek in Pinehurst, Idaho.
After high school, Bud worked carpentry jobs, often in the local mines, or on a project for one of his brothers. He saved money with the intention of buying land for subsistence farming but decided to go to college instead. He graduated from Washington State College in 1956, then moved across the country to Boston, where he worked in a lab at Massachusetts General Eye and Ear Infirmary.
He met Alison Mann after a dinner event at the Arlington Street Unitarian Church in Boston, and they wed in 1957. A year later, he and Alison moved to Pullman, Wash., for Bud’s graduate studies at Washington State University. In 1960 they had their first child, Kirk.
Bud obtained his PhD in botany in 1962, launching his career researching electric potentials of cell membranes and the role they play in plant physiology. This work took Bud and his family to the University of Edinburgh, Vassar College, Argonne National Laboratory and at last to Vermont, in 1968, when Bud accepted a professorship at UVM. In 1971, Bud and Alison’s daughter, Laura, was born.
The family thrived in Vermont. Bud and Alison took up Scottish and English country dancing, joined the Unitarian church, and the whole family took up cross-country skiing. They acquired a sunfish sailboat, and Bud and Kirk learned how to sail together on the ponds and lakes of Vermont.
In retirement, Bud took time to write about his early life in Idaho and Washington and revisited the journal he had kept when first making his way in Boston. He and Alison took several trips to Europe to see art and architecture. Back in Vermont, they visited nearby towns on the weekends, enjoying the state that they had made their home. In 2019, Alison and Bud moved to Wake Robin in Shelburne, spending time with friends they had known for decades and making new friends as well.
Bud was preceded in death by his brothers, and Alison passed away in late 2025. Bud is survived by his son, Kirk Etherton, and daughter in-law, Lucy Holdstedt; daughter, Laura Etherton, and son in-law, Adam Marx; and many cousins, nieces, nephews, former graduate students, colleagues, neighbors and friends.
The family would like to share their gratitude for the care that Bud and his family received from the Wake Robin community and Bayada hospice providers. Services will take place in spring. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to COTS, a nonprofit providing housing and homelessness prevention services in Vermont, at cotsonline.org/donate. Please visit awrfh.com to share your memories and condolences.