Kenneth Walter Buxton, of Williamsburg, died peacefully at home on Friday, Aug. 1, 2014. He was 89.
He was born on Nov. 4, 1924, to Ada Lee Hawken and Walter Henry Buxton in Webster Groves, Mo.
Mr. Buxton was a logical thinker, a wonderful storyteller and an adventurer. He was a natural mathematician, who at age 16 was called on to teach high school physics and math as WWII was breaking out and the school’s math teacher enlisted.
He himself enlisted in the U.S. Army before his 18th birthday (disguising his age) and trained with the Army in advanced electrical engineering at Lehigh University and at Camp Crowder, Mo. He served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps in the Assam Valley of India, part of a unit supporting American and Chinese troops fighting the Japanese in Burma and China.
He liked to tell stories about meal after meal of Vienna sausages and hitching a ride on a plane “flying the Hump” – part of the famous operation airlifting supplies over the Himalayas for Allied troops past occupying forces. After Armistice, he commandeered an Army Jeep and went on a wild game hunt.
Mr. Buxton attended Purdue University on the G.I. Bill and received a degree in electrical engineering. There he met the love of his life, Kathryn Irene Roark, and the two were married on Sept. 4, 1949. He worked for a short time as a lineman in Texas for the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. He and Kathryn settled in Webster Groves, and he took a job in the engineering division of Purina Farms in St. Louis. That was where they started a family.
Working for Purina, and later for Avon Products, Mr. Buxton helped oversee site selection, new construction and facilities management in Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Venezuela, Iran, Chile, Italy, England, France, Ireland, Spain, Japan, Poland and the Soviet Union. He and his wife lived for many years in Wilton, Conn. and he commuted daily to work in Manhattan, N.Y.
Mr. Buxton was always discovering a new passion: he was an avid hunter and fly fisherman; he built a canvas canoe with his kids; he played tennis, skied, sailed and was a constant putterer, always concocting a new device or plan to save time, labor, money or just do something more efficiently.
He loved to read, and was a connoisseur of food, wine and music. In his 60s, he learned how to play the bass, eventually playing with the Hampton Roads Orchestra and later with the James River Symphony Orchestra. He served as a volunteer stage manager for the Williamsburg Symphonia, volunteered at Colonial Williamsburg, adopted a section of Virginia highway with his wife and was active in several social groups at Kings Mill.
Mr. Buxton and his wife loved to travel and they took many trips together: to Europe, the Mediterranean, Alaska, California wine country and South America. They also saw much of the United States by motorcar with their five children, camping in tents and later traveling with campers and in motor homes. After they retired to Williamsburg, they continued to travel widely in their motor home, frequently planning trips so they could visit their far-flung children and grandchildren in Idaho, Washington, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Washington, Florida and Maine.
He is survived by his daughter, Christy Wauzzinski and her husband, Robert; son, Kenneth Arthur Buxton and his wife, Karen; son, Donald Buxton; daughter, Kathryn Buxton and her husband, Rick Ackermann; daughter, Patricia DeSimone and her husband, Randy Whitehouse; grandchildren, Sharon Rose and Aric Robert Wauzzinski, Kathryn Irene, Kenneth Ira, Konnor Ian and Kelly Inez Buxton, Gina Marie and David Austin DeSimone and Jane Lee Ackermann; and great-grandchildren, Dylan Keith and Kenneth Michael Buxton.
There will be visiting hours from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 8, 2014, at the Buxton house.
Please leave online condolences for the family at Nelsen Funeral Home.
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