a seat on the Marshall County Community Foundation board, where she chaired the Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship Program. Working on the MCCF grants had her meeting different people and learning the area, she said.
But by that second year, she had been diagnosed with her own cancer and was the event’s keynote speaker. She remembers it was dark as she started to speak and had to use a flashlight. “It was good I couldn’t see faces,” Pam said. “It was emotional.”
She got involved with the Lake Maxinkuckee Environmental Council, eventually serving as president. “It is important to educate the community on the importance of a healthy lake,” Pam said, noting what a tremendous asset it is to town and lake residents as well as the Academies.
“How strange to now be a survivor,” she said. “You are just thankful for all the support. If you are ever sick like that, this is the place to be.”
Photo by Camilo ‘Mo’ Morales.
Buxton partnered with several women to form LIFT (Lending Inspirational Friendship Together), a non-profit Culver organization designed to support women in the area through mentoring,
After seventeen years in Indiana, “I do feel like a Hoosier,” Pam said, noting she grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and how nice it has been to be back in the Midwest. But she views retirement “as another really fun, great adventure. Culver represented another great adventure. We are not people with routines.” This year, instead of packing for the family vacation in June, the Buxtons were packing — and sorting — for their move to New Hampshire. They will be renting a house while waiting for their home to be built. As boarding school lifers, it will be the first time they have owned real estate or a home. “Owning our own home is a big first. Taking care of lawns, fixing a roof, all that stuff will be brand new,” she said. Ironically, their final departure from Culver was also a first.
Like Culver, the Buxton residence was a home away from home where students were invited to relax, play games, eat, and enjoy a homelike atmosphere.
volunteering, and providing resources. It is an effort she would like to establish once she is settled in New Hampshire. And there was Relay For Life. Initiated by an Academies’ student in 2008, Culver Relay For Life “became an unprecedented communitywide event” as every “sub-community of Culver — town, Academies, lake, and surrounding community — partnered to fight a universally devastating disease,” stated The Culver Citizen. “It made me so proud and thankful that we have students who understand and appreciate the community,” Pam said of that first year.
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SUMMER 2016
“May was something major every weekend … the busiest of our seventeen years,” she said. They had planned to be packed by the first of May; it didn’t happen. (Editor’s note: Understandably, it is hard to sort and pack when going-away gifts are coming at you from every direction.)
“We will have a Culver house throughout the house,” Buxton said. “It will take a year to build our house and then we’ll get involved with the community, like we did here,” Buxton said. They will not be far from the University of New Hampshire, where she looks forward to taking some classes and attending seminars. Looking around the ground floor of Huffington Library, bathed in light and overlooking Lake Maxinkuckee, Pam Buxton dabs her eyes with a second tissue. “It’s going to be strange not being here.