Interview with Mrs. Charlotte Bussman

Ellie Cooper interviewed Mrs. Charlotte Bussman at Cooperstown Elementary on Friday, March 31, 2017.

Mrs. Bussman was born in Germany and came to Cooperstown in 1978 with her husband. Mrs. Bussman and her husband decided to move to Cooperstown all the way from New Jersey Mrs. Bussman said when she was a young girl she went to an all girl school and went to church with her family .

After she had children, she decided to buy a business in Cooperstown. After they bought the business they became a resident of our community. She was a volunteer for her daughter's Girl Scout troop. Mrs. Bussman said she would go shopping for food and clothes and drag a little red wagon all around town with her kids when they were young She took her kids to the library every day and didn’t really let her kids watch T.V. She said that her children were practically raised in the Cooperstown Village Library.

Mrs. Bussman thinks Cooperstown was better back in the day they had a department store with two floors and everything you needed in other stores for less money than nowadays. She was not that happy when they turned all the good stores into Baseball Stores. Mrs. Bussman lived in the house that Ellie is growing up in which now is about 200 hundred years old.

Mrs. Bussman said in the summers she would go onto her boat on Otsego Lake with her family and they would go swimming and fishing with her kids when they were young. Mrs. Bussman said the weather changed so fast, “One day it’s super hot and the next day, brrr it’s so cold.” Mrs. Bussman’s words of wisdom are, “Be a part of the community and the world and never stop reading.”

Mrs. Bussman is an inspiration to this community. Listen to our interview to be inspired.