He always went in the back door of the stately white house on 24th Street, through the kitchen, the breakfast room, down two steps, into the den.
Bud Sidles would sit with Uncle Lauer and Aunt Clara to talk about his day.
Clara was his mom's youngest sister. She played piano, volunteered for Junior League, called her only son Mikey.
Lauer ran a successful business, fished with friends, read voraciously, smoked cigars.
The couple belonged to the Country Club and the University Club and Holy Trinity Episcopal Church.
They loved to travel, taking their son with them to explore the world.
His uncle had a great sense of humor, Sidles said. He was so well-read - the classics, current literature, politics - he could talk about any subject.
People are also reading…
"They were always happy to see me. They'd always ask, 'How was your day? What are you reading?'"
Bud was away in the service that winter when the call came.
His aunt and uncle had been murdered, along with Lilyan Fencl, their longtime maid.
He returned for the funeral, a crowd overflowing the church. A city reeling.
"It was a devastating event," the 72-year-old owner of Capital Contractors said.
"Something like that lives with you for the rest of your life."
Her husband dropped her off at work that day the way he always did - early, so Violet McCain could open the office.
She was fresh out of college when she started the job at Capital Bridge and Steel Co. 2½ years earlier.
And she loved her boss, Mr. C. Lauer Ward. Such a wonderful, caring man.
She had married the year before, and he gave the couple $50 to try a dessert on their honeymoon in Miami - an expensive treat he and his wife had loved at a restaurant there.
It's out of this world, he told his secretary.
He had an appointment that morning. It wasn't like Mr. Ward to be late.
At 9, she began calling his home, letting the phone ring and ring because she knew the maid was hard of hearing.
She dialed every 10 minutes.
At 11, two company executives drove to 24th and Van Dorn.
The news came over the radio at noon: Prominent Lincoln couple and their maid found dead.
The phone began to ring at Capital Bridge and Steel Co.
At 2 p.m., McCain went home, too nervous to work.
The nightmares would last for months.
More than 45 years later, a woman named Liza Ward wrote a book called "Outside Valentine," a fictionalized account of the Starkweather murders.
"I made a face for my grandparents," the granddaughter of Lauer and Clara Ward said in 2004.
"I made them strong in the face of their deaths."
Her father, Michael Ward, was at boarding school when his parents and Fencl were killed.
He was 14. His cousin Bud's parents became his guardians.
The boy who created a museum in the basement of a stately white house in Lincoln - displaying arrowheads and shards of pottery and souvenirs from trips with his parents - grew up and became an art collector.
He took his only child on trips all over the world, but he didn't revisit the past.
Mike Ward lives and works in New York. Bud thought it would be best not to contact him for this story.
An old friend from his days at Irving Junior High remembered how Mike befriended her when she was the new kid at school.
Hi. I saw you moving into the neighborhood. Where are you from?
Utah.
Oh, you must be a Mormon.
No.
What are you then?
Well, last year I went to an Episcopalian school.
Well, I'm Episcopalian. Do you want to go to church with my mom and me?
The next Sunday, a black Packard pulled into Zoya Zeman's driveway.
A well-dressed young man came to the door and knocked.
"His parents taught him impeccable manners," she recalled.
Later, after the murders, when Mike came back and his friends didn't know what to say, what to do, he filled in the gaps, talking, trying to put everyone at ease.
It bothered her later, when she heard how a young Charles Starkweather was teased for his red hair and bowed legs.
"The Mike I came to know was a person who would never bully anyone."
The way his parents raised him.
Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.
