Orlay Savage

Orlay Earl Savage, known as Earl in the latter part of his life, was born in Somerset, Nova Scotia, in the house of his parents, Lester Savage and Muriel “Elaine” Dempsey. When his parents marriage ended he was ten. His mother took him and his two younger siblings to the United States. That was the last time he saw his father until he was twenty-seven, when his own son was born.

In 1959, as soon as he was old enough, he joined the Navy. Stationed out of Hawaii, he spent four years on the North Pacific. A lover of the automobile Orlay owned a 1957 Buick Century Riviera and it was the only car on the island at the time with chrome rims. Even the officers were wondering how he had such a nice car and where he got those rims. In 1964 he met Jeannie Elliott in Long Beach California and married her shortly after. That December he left active duty and went to work for the Southern California Gas Company. Soon they had two small children, and shortly afterward they moved to Southern Oregon to raise the family.

He tried more than one way to make a living. He started an excavation and paving company. He built and sold portable buildings. The excavation work held into the late 1970s. When the economy turned, he sold what he had and used what was left to open Budget Tyres in 1980. Not long after that, he and Jeannie divorced. They had been married eighteen years.

He met Mary Reed. They married in 1983. Now as “Earl” he ran the tire shop for nearly forty years and retired around 2018. He and Mary spent years hunting down Japanese art, furniture, and whatever else caught them. He kept her at home through nearly ten years of Alzheimer’s. She died there in February 2023.

Dementia came for him not long after. He passed peacefully in his sleep in the same house on August 7, 2026. He was eighty-six.

He was a devoted husband and a loving father. He will be greatly missed by his family,

May he rest in peace.

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