Darla Budworth, champion of Healdsburg and its history, dies at 83

There may be others who knew and cared about Healdsburg and its history and townsfolk as much as native daughter Darla Budworth did. But there couldn’t be many.

“She was one in a million,” says Holly Hoods, a friend and also executive director and curator of the Healdsburg Museum. “I don’t know if I ever met anybody who loved this community more than Darla.”

Born in Healdsburg in 1936 to a family with pioneer roots, the former Darla Ann Williams watched her hometown grow from a boots-and-overalls burg of fewer than 3,000 residents to a tony yet still tight-knit and highly hospitable Wine Country destination, population about 12,000.

Budworth was a founding member of its museum and historical society, and was for nearly three decades one of its most steadfast volunteers and treasured storytellers.

Many in Healdsburg remember when, in celebration of the city’s sesquicentennial in 2007, a crowd gathered in the Raven Theater for a film full of historic town photos.

Budworth pretty much narrated it from her seat: That fellow is so-and-so, that building was such-and-such.

“Healdsburg,” said her son, David Budworth of San Francisco, “was her thing.”

Darla Budworth had been in failing health for months when she died Oct. 17. She was 83.

Though she was rarely very far from Healdsburg and always carried the city in her heart, she did move to Santa Rosa more than 50 years ago with her husband, Dave Budworth. They lived off of McDonald Avenue until downsizing to Healdsburg four years ago.

Starting in 1990, Darla Budworth trekked often from Santa Rosa to Healdsburg - and always on the fourth Thursday of the month. That was her day to welcome visitors to the nonprofit museum that occupies the former Carnegie Library on Matheson Street.

“She had the same shift for all those years,” Hoods said, describing Budworth, a people person and lover of history, as the ideal museum docent.

“What a lot of people appreciated about her,” Hoods said, “was she told really good stories. She would tell stories about the people and the places that brought them to life. ”

Her parents, Christine and Henry “Cotton” Williams, also were Healdsburg natives. Cotton Williams served for a time as Healdsburg’s treasurer, and he managed the town’s Prune Packers baseball team that played its first game in 1921.

Born Aug. 26, 1936, Darla Ann Williams was a descendant of William Washington Ferguson and Mary Cooperider Ferguson, who migrated from Iowa and settled in Alexander Valley in 1857.

As a kid, she sang in Smith Robinson’s Chancel Choir and developed a lifelong love of baseball while watching her dad play and coach at Recreation Park, home now to the Prune Packers team that was founded in 2014 to revive Healdsburg’s baseball tradition.

She was 21 when she married Dave Budworth, a Sebastopol-reared veteran of the Navy and the Korean War.

They’d met on blind date in Healdsburg, and they exchanged vows Sept. 7, 1957, at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Rosa.

Their son and only child, born in 1965, today owns San Francisco’s Marina Meats as the well-known, TV-savvy Dave the Butcher.

He credits his mother with cultivating his interest in good food by introducing him to a wide range of cuisine. Budworth said his mom also piqued his interest in world travel, telling him, “You’ve got to go to Europe. You’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that.”

All his life, the junior David Budworth has marveled at his mother’s passion for Healdsburg history and her world-class collection of printed materials and personal artifacts.

In her home, he noted, is a sofa “that came across the plains in a covered wagon.”

Darla Budworth has shared items of historic interest with the Healdsburg Museum, which in 2011 acknowledged her many contributions and her decades of service by presenting her the Langhart Volunteer Appreciation Award.

The honor is named for Ed Langhart, Healdsburg’s first official historian and archivist, and the historical society’s first president.

Langhart and Budworth worked together to found the society in 1976.

In addition to her passion for the history, people and stories of Healdsburg, Budworth for 25 years bred, trained and showed collies with her husband. It was a major thrill when their expertise with collies connected them to “Lassie” star Jon Provost, now a longtime resident of Sonoma County.

Darla Budworth discovered an early fascination also with home computers, and for a time taught computer classes at Santa Rosa Junior College.

Four years ago, after living for 47 years on Park Street, just off McDonald Avenue, the Budworths returned to Healdsburg. Though Darla Budworth had never really left, she was happy to be home.

In addition to her husband in Healdsburg and her son in San Francisco, she is survived by a brother, Dennis Williams of Elk Grove.

There will be a celebration of her life after the holidays.