Edwin D. "Buck" Buckingham

EDWIN D. “BUCK” BUCKINGHAM, was from Shiloh, TN, born at home in Possum Hollow on Sunday, June 16, 1918. He lived most of his life in Colorado, and died in Los Alamos on February 17, 2015, after a short illness. He was four months shy of his 97th birthday. Two years earlier he moved into assisted living in Los Alamos, to be near his only child, Judy Buckingham, and her husband, Bob Williams. This was a courageous move – he had been the same house for over 60 years!\r\nBuck’s childhood experiences in Tennessee involved tobacco fields, hunting and fishing in the woods, and a self-sufficient, pioneer-style way of life. He walked a mile each way to the three-room schoolhouse for grades 1 through 8. After that, his sister paid his bus fare to Clarksville, which allowed him to complete high school in 1938.\r\nBut high school was delayed while he healed from a shotgun accident that happened while hunting with his brothers. The result was a right leg that was fused at the knee. His irregular gait was not much of an impediment – he shunned pity and never considered himself “handicapped”.\r\nUnable to join WWII, his war effort was as a mechanic in the growing aviation industry. After jobs in Baltimore and Nashville, he and a friend drove an elderly lady to Las Vegas, then continued to Cheyenne, Wyoming. He quickly “landed” a job there with United Airlines, where he met and married Jeune (and yes, that’s the way she spelled it) on July 27, 1946. Shortly after, they moved to Ft. Morgan, CO to work the farm with Jeune’s dad. In 1952 they had a daughter and returned to Denver and bought the last home they would ever share. Buck’s last 16 years there were spent as a widower, after Jeune’s death in 1996.\r\nHe was an exemplary and a moral human, whose ego never got in the way. A mechanic, carpenter, farmer, and neighborhood fix-it guy; a fisherman and a gardener, as well as a landscape painter, who cared about and respected people, and rarely complained about anything. No local memorial service is planned, but his cremains will be taken to Colorado for a family remembrance to be held later in the year. The family of Edwin D. “Buck” Buckingham has entrusted their loved one to DeVargas Funeral Home & Crematory of the Española Valley.

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