With Deepest Gratitude to the Cleveland Clinic Specialty Center in Wooster
The people at Cleveland Clinic in Wooster were Jim’s amazing caregivers, and, through your love and care, you all became his friends. He spoke frequently of all of you, telling us about you, about his interactions with you, and about what he learned of your lives. You treated Jim not only as a patient, but as the wonderful and rambunctious person he was. He spent months and years with you, sometimes several hours in a single day, day after day, and your love and compassion helped keep Jim strong and engaged during his journey, this fight, waged by all of you, together. We can’t tell you how much that–and you–meant to Jim, and how much you all mean to us.
How can we possibly thank Dr. Masci, Jim’s medical oncologist, for his heroic, vigilant battle to help Jim live the best and longest life he could? Dr. Masci, you and Jim fought the good and brave fight together, and Jim felt you behind him every second of the way. He was grateful for all of your knowledge, your compassion, your honesty, and your willingness to do whatever could be done to help. Your head must be heavy from all the halos piled above it.
And we thank Judy, Gail, and Ruth, among several other nurses who worked with Dr. Masci in oncology, along with Jim, P.A., for all of the loving, attentive care you gave Jim. He watched you carefully and how you interacted with him and with others, and he sang praises and gratitudes to you regularly. Gail, the butterflies gave Jim such pleasure in the last days. You all were such important sources of strength, liveliness, and diversion for Jim, even as you saw him through some of the most trying times in his life.
In Radiology, we thank Dr. Lee, Kim, and all of the other techs who so carefully positioned the radiation beams across Jim’s abdomen. Jim spoke about how careful you were–and about that wonderful tattoo job : )
Finally, we thank Dr. Miller, Jim’s surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, for your approach to Jim and for performing his liver resection. You helped give Jim hope, with your can-do attitude. Jim repeatedly described when you said to him about his liver tumors, “Let’s get ’em the hell out of there,” and flung your thumb over your shoulder. He laughed at that, and he took heart in your strength and your desire to forge on in hope. We started to call you “The Cowboy Surgeon.” Thank you.
Thank you all.
In Memory Of J. F. Buckley 
I first heard of the man when I was scheduling classes one quarter. My friend Helena told me I had to take a course with Jim Buckley.
Helena adored Jim not only as a professor but as a friend, even though they couldn’t agree whether Tom Robbins should be considered literature. I signed up for his Early American Literature course where I got to read really dull stuff by people with names like Head of a Cow or something. Fortunately, Jim made it interesting, at least for me. It was a 200 survey course bright and early in the morning after all, so there were plenty of drool soaked sleeves in the room. I didn’t realize then how frustrating it can be to face a room full of students who really don’t care about the subject matter while you are passionate about the material and the teaching. Not many days into the class, I became the go- to guy in the room for the students and the instructor. This is a job I recommend to any student who has a genuine apprehension toward speaking in a classroom. Our dialogues in the classroom gave me a lot of confidence, and I’m sure he appreciated my role as a sort of classroom liaison between a passionate man possibly too bright and a classroom of disinterested possibly too dim students. After that I got to talk to him quite a bit over the years, and I think we both enjoyed the humorous banter. he was a good man and will be missed.
By: Jim Snyder on September 10, 2008
at 7:34 pm