Granby Living April2019

CELEBRATING OUR SENIORS
PAINTER
TONY BUSSMAN
IS A JACK OF MANY TRADES —
AND A MASTER OF TRIVIA
By Sarah Merrill
If you live in Granby, there’s a good
chance you’ve seen Tony Bussman driving
his white van through town, Tony
Bussman Painting Co. across the side. His fullservice
residential painting company works all
over the state, but primarily in the Farmington
Valley and Hartford County.
You might also recognize Tony from his
regular participation in the Gran-Bee, an
annual “trivia-bee” fundraiser for the Granby
Education Foundation. Over the past decade,
he and his team members have brought home
the top trophy four times. Tony’s wife, Ellen
(Lamoureux) Bussman, a surgical technologist
at Baystate Health, calls him a “total brainiac.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” laughs Tony.
“But I’ve always loved trivia.”
Tony was born on Dec. 28, 1948 in Buffalo,
New York, the younger of two brothers.
“Shortly after I was born, my father, an aeronautic
engineer, moved our family to Seattle
because that’s where all the airplane business
was,” Tony says.
When his family moved back east after
about six years, his parents bought a house in
East Aurora, N.Y., just south of Buffalo. Tony
graduated from high school in Aurora as the
class president. He was a good student and a
very good athlete, quarterbacking the football
team and making all-conference in basketball.
“Baseball was my biggest sport,” says Tony.
He graduated from Stetson University in
DeLand, Florida, with a B.A. in American studies:
“The 1960s was a great time to be a young
person and a student — the music, the culture,
the activism.”
“Incidentally,” Tony adds, “It’s little-known
that I was also a ballet dancer in college. I
started taking classes because of a girl — but I
quickly became very good at it.”
As a 1971 college graduate, with the Vietnam
War underway, the writing was on the wall.
However, Tony’s parents remembered that
when he was in the second grade he nearly died
after a bee sting. His father suggested he see an
allergist before his draft
board physical.
“I was still very allergic,”
says Tony. “At my physical, I handed a note
to the doctor and that was that — no Vietnam
for me.”
Because he imagined he’d be at war, Tony
hadn’t pursued his original plan of applying to
law school. Unsure what to do next, he took a
trip around Europe.
“I followed the Fromm’s book on how to live
on five dollars a day,” says Tony. “I slept on a lot
of trains.”
After working for his brother’s bar in Rochester,
N.Y., Tony took a job with a brand-new
health club.
“This place was the embryo of what health
clubs would become,” he says. “It had a jogging
track and a swimming pool — not just a vibrating
belt!”
He stayed with this fitness company for about
10 years, ultimately owning and managing clubs
in Manchester and Southington, Conn.
Tony’s first marriage was in 1974 and his first
child was born in 1981. Not enjoying the stress
of owning two fitness clubs, Tony sold his share.
Seemingly never afraid to try something new,
for the next 20 years Tony pursued a variety of
other endeavors, including selling employee
benefit plans and working as a stockbroker.
In the late ’90s, Tony began picking up
painting jobs because he enjoyed the work.
There was significant precedent for this, Tony
explains. His father used to build and restore
houses.
“My father’s generation could do anything,”
says Tony. “He built houses, he restored cars,
and he could fix anything. I picked up none of
those skills, but I could always paint. Even as a
kid, he had me painting.”
In high school and in college, Tony often
painted during summer breaks.
In 2001 Tony started his own company, Tony
Tony
Bussman
in 1971
at Stetson University
Bussman Painting, LLC. Almost 20 years later,
he’s still enjoying residential painting — and
still trying to avoid bees.
“The truth is, I get stung every year,” laughs
Tony. “I have an EpiPen, but I still have to rush
to the clinic or the emergency room. I’ve had
some close calls.”
Tony and his wife Ellen — married for 28
years — met through mutual friends. When
they married in 1991, they joined their two
families and have four children between them.
Their youngest got married last month.
“Our kids had a great experience with the
Granby schools,” says Tony. “And recently I’ve
gotten the inside perspective from subbing
there.”
When painting work gets slow in the winter,
Tony has enjoyed some substitute teaching:
“I’ve gotten to know a lot of the teachers, and
they’re great.”
“We also loved the sports programs in
Granby,” says Tony, who coached his daughter’s
soccer team and his son’s Little League team. “I
spent many, many hours on the field, but I’d do
it over again in a second.”
Ellen, who grew up in Chicopee, Mass., has
lived in Granby for 35 years. She says Granby
was much quieter 30 years ago. She and Tony
live near the center of town at the end of a quiet
cul-de-sac. They back up to the woods and
enjoy frequent wild animal sightings.
“Given how much I drive for work, the only
complaint I have about Granby is how far it is
from the highway,” says Tony. “But driving an
extra 20 minutes is a small price to pay for the
beautiful pastoral existence that we’ve got here.”
Sarah Merrill is a personal historian with
Merrill Memoirs, based in Granby. She works
with individuals and families to capture and record
their personal memoirs and family histories.
Visit her website at www.memoirsbymerrill.com.
Celebrating Our Seniors is sponsored by McLean
8 | APRIL 2019