Dwight Cecil Buss

Dwight Cecil Buss, son of Rose Marie Bucher and Charles Lewis Buss, was born 22 April 1909 in Waterloo, DeKalb County, IN, near where his father had been born and raised.

Though his birth occurred in Waterloo, the bulk of his childhood was spent in the community his mother had come from back in Martintown, Green County, WI. By 1910 the household was established on land that had been part of the main estate of his great-grandparents Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader. In 1911, Dwight’s younger brother Estel was born. This proved to be the completion of Rose and Charles’s brood.

During Dwight and Estel’s childhood, their father was the foreman of Nathaniel Martin’s legacy mills -- a sawmill and a grist mill. Charles Buss answered to his father-in-law Elwood Bucher, who had taken over the mills after the death of Horatio Woodman Martin in 1906. Three years into his tenure, Elwood had added to the operation by installing a generator, powered by the flow of the Pecatonica River, and winning a contract to provide electricity to the nearby town of Winslow, Stephenson County, IL. Elwood was into middle age at this point and saw Charles as being his business heir apparent. Charles longed to be his own man. His presence was needed, though, particularly after Elwood became an invalid circa 1920. This matter remained a point of contention until the early 1920s when Charles lost three fingers in an accident at the mills. He took it as a sign that he should not have kept the job and he and Rose departed to seek out the opportunities that they had been denying themselves.

The Buss household moved to Vermilion County, IL, settling on a farm near Olivet. This was in turn near the town of Danville. Aside from his period of military service, Dwight resided in Vermilion County throughout his adult life. He did not even go away to college. Olivet was home to Olivet Nazarene College -- now known as Olivet Nazarene University. The 1929 edition of that institution’s yearbook, The Aurora, includes Dwight as a member of the freshman class. (The photo at right is from that source.) Given their strong involvement in Nazarene religious life, both of Dwight’s parents must have been delighted that he would attend that particular school. In fact, they may even have insisted upon it. The 1929 yearbook however does not reveal whether Dwight aimed for any of the customized programs offered by Olivet, whose mandate including preparing its young men and women to become preachers, missionaries, academic teachers, or music teachers. As a freshman, Dwight was just a general student, not yet a member of a specific department, though group photos in the yearbook show him as a member of both of the campus’s literary societies, and of the male basketball team. It is not even clear that he obtained any sort of degree. He had the misfortune to come of age just as the Great Depression started. Like so many others he had to give up school and try to put food on the table. He did attend Olivet again when he was in his mid-twenties, but meanwhile, he took what jobs he could get. Just staying employed at all was a challenge. The 1933 Danville city directory lists him as a dishwasher at the local YWCA cafeteria. (Not even the YMCA, but the YWCA.) It is a safe bet that if he had been able to obtain anything better, that other job would have been the one mentioned in the directory.

Dwight married Eunice Malvary Black, daughter of Fred Black and Allie E. McQueen. She was a local girl, having been born and raised in Fairmont, about ten miles southwest of Danville. With a birthdate of 9 September 1919, Eunice was a decade younger than Dwight. The wedding is thought to have occurred in the early 1940s. The pair may have met through Dwight’s first cousin Ray Elwood Bucher, who was Eunice’s gynecologist in Fairmount and later in Danville.

Despite having just become a father, Dwight chose in 1943 to join the United States Air Force, enlisting 15 September 1943. In a 1978 letter to his mother’s first cousin Bert Warner, Dwight mentioned having spent a few months in 1943 stationed in Monterey, CA. This was where the Air Force sent servicemen whom they wanted to train in foreign languages, and so chances are good that Dwight was put through an immersion-study program. His precise role with the military has been difficult to determine, which in itself may be a hint that he worked in an intelligence capacity (à la his first cousin Glenn Charles Ames) and was not allowed to mention what he did. Dwight was released from the Air Force 29 September 1945, the end of the war having obviated the need for a full term of service.

Dwight is the boy hanging upsidedown in this view of some of the 1919 class of pupils of Martin School in Martintown. From left to right in back: Aubrey Davis, Elmer Kuhl, Dwight Buss, Ernest Hastings (a second cousin of Dwight), and Earl Davis. From left to right in front: Joseph Reynolds, Hobart Lehman, Alton Kiel, Ted Kline, Lewis Cecil, Burton Eells, and Estel Buss. The teacher that year was Lillian Gempeler (1890-1982).

During his long working life back home as a civilian, Dwight was employed as an inspector for Time-O-Matic. Later, when his father was finally willing to retire in the early 1960s, Dwight took over his father’s long-held contractual postal carrier route, known as the Star Route, which ran from Danville to Chrisman. Further income was derived from an apartment building in Ridge Farm. The latter community, located in the southernmost part of Vermilion County near the boundary with Edgar County, was home to Dwight and Eunice from the post-war years on through to the 1990s. The apartment building, prior to their tenure as owners, had been a Lindley Hadley’s Hotel.

The Star Route passed through Georgetown. It surely included the rural area to the west of that community. If so, this means Dwight delivered mail to the very farm that his great great grandparents Jacob Strader and Rachel Starr had acquired in 1822 and lived upon until the late 1830s. That homestead was the birthplace of Hannah Strader. Whether that particular parcel was still home to any relatives is unknown, but some of Dwight’s mail patrons in the Georgetown area were indeed distant cousins; in particular, descendants of Hannah’s uncle Absalom Starr, the man who held the distinction of being the very first man to be issued an official deed bearing the name Vermilion County, Illinois, the county having just been created as a jurisdiction when Absalom went to the land office in Palastine, IL. (Dwight was possibly unaware of the connection to the county’s pioneer era.)

Dwight passed away 15 January 1994 at the Veterans’ Affairs Medical Center in Danville. His remains were interred at Crown Hill Cemetery in Ridge Farm. Eunice survived him, passing away 29 August 1996 at the United Samaritans Medical Center, Logan, Edgar County, IL. Her remains were interred with those of Dwight.

Descendants of Dwight Cecil Buss with Eunice Malvary Black

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