Arden S. Young

Arden, with his wife, the late Barbara Burrage Young, started the Taylor Rental Center on Upper Front St. in Binghamton in 1970.

The early days of Taylor Rental were difficult as the young business opened just after the latest Yellow Pages were published and they needed to wait almost a full year before it could be included – the kind of thing that in those days could make or break a business.

But that obstacle did not stop Arden. Very few things would in his long life.

Well into his late 80s, Arden walked several miles a day first thing in the morning, rain, shine or snow. In the last couple of years as his physical troubles mounted and he spent more time doing Sudokus, he insisted on doing only the hard ones, never the easy. He had a system for solving those and just about everything else in life.

Arden was born in 1929 to Daniel and Annie (Dyer) Young in Lamoine, Maine, the youngest of three children.

Beginning when he was 12 years old, Arden spent summers working on a farm to help out his family. From that young start, Arden never really stopped working.

Throughout his life perhaps Arden’s highest ideal was to always make himself useful, whether it was keeping machines going with MacGyver-like fixes long past when most people would throw things away, to his longtime volunteer activities.

After he graduated from Camden High School in 1947 (where he first met his future wife), Arden spent a year working to earn money to go to college. He received his engineering degree in applied physics from the University of Maine at Orono in 1952.

His first engineering jobs took him all over the world, including Japan and Cuba. Around the same time, his future wife, Barbara, would also travel all over the world on her own.

By 1959, they found each other again in Maine. They married and raised three children.

When their youngest went off to college, the pair continued their world travels, which were a special passion of Barbara’s.

But perhaps more than any of the dozens of countries he visited over the course of his life, Arden’s favorite travel was his route for Broome County Meals on Wheels, delivering countless meals to those in need in nearly 30 years of volunteering.

After they retired in 1995, Arden and Barbara, would return to Camden, Maine, from May 15 to Oct 15 every year. (Always those exact dates. If they were ever off by a day, their friends there would get worried)

At home in Camden, they delighted in hosting friends from near and far for lobster lunches.

For years after Barbara died in 2013, Arden would walk the 4-mile round trip to her grave early every morning to water the geraniums he had planted there.

They share a headstone that for a decade had an open date for Arden. He will now join Barbara and it will be up to their three children, David Young, Emily (Young) Gaudinier, and Nancy Young to water the flowers.

Arden is also survived by his older sister, Joyce (Young) Stahl; two grandchildren, Melissa Gaudinier (and husband, Jeremy), and Justin Gaudinier (and wife, Victoria); and four nephews, Nicholas, John, Dean, and Matthew Stahl.

A celebration of Arden’s life will take place at TR Events, 1041 Upper Front St. in Binghamton on Monday, October 23 from 5-7 p.m. TR Events is part of the Taylor Rental business that Arden and Barbara started all those years ago and remains in the family – a legacy of which he was justly proud.

In lieu of flowers, please donate to Rotary International (Arden was a devoted member of the Nimmonsburg Rotary Club for nearly 50 years) or the Broome County Meals on Wheels program (through Broome County Office for Aging), where Arden volunteered to the end of this days.

In keeping with Arden’s ethic to be of use, to be the first to jump in to help, feel free to lend a hand to someone who needs it and tell them Arden sent you.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.WmRChase.com for the Young family.