JF Buckley, 62, of Mansfield, formerly of Columbus, died September 6, 2008. He passed away at Hospice of North Central Ohio after a long battle with cancer. He was born August 2, 1946 in Jamestown, New York to the late Walter J. Buckley and Mary Alice Shattuck. He is survived by a daughter, Michelle Lynn Ford, of Ellington, New York and a daughter and son-in-law, Valerie Anne and Johnny Beason, of Walkersville, Maryland; six grandchildren, Luke Swanson and Aaron Swanson of Lakewood, New York, Nathan Ford and Andrew Ford of Ellington, New York and Alissa Beason and Sydney Beason of Walkersville, Maryland; and two sisters, Mary Lou Janis of Alamo, Texas and Ruth Anne Maderski of Danbury, Connecticut.
A 1964 graduate of Pine Valley High School in South Dayton, NY, JF attended Kent State University and Bryant and Stratton Business Institute. He was employed at Marlin Rockwell, Inc. in Jamestown, NY for 23 years, during which time he served as union steward and chairperson of U.A.W. Local 338 for many years. After earning a BS degree in Business and Public Relations in 1986 and a MA in English in 1988, both from SUNY College at Fredonia, he earned a Ph.D. in English from The Ohio State University in 1993. JF was employed as a stockbroker with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in New York City and Columbus, Ohio before teaching at Iowa State University. In 1995 he moved to Mansfield, Ohio to teach at The Ohio State University in Mansfield, where he taught courses in early and 19th century American literature, literary theory and criticism, and film. He is the author of Desire, The Self, The Social Critic, and articles on Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, Rebecca Harding Davis, Transcendentalism, and the pedagogy of teaching LGBT literature. At the time of his death he was working on a book-length examination of nineteenth-century women authors of sentimental and domestic fiction.
In 2005 he received The Ohio State University, College of Humanities Diversity Enhancement Award, as well as an OSU Mid-Career/Senior Faculty Teaching Enhancement Grant (2005-6). In addition to spending time with his daughters and their families, and his sisters and their families, he loved research and teaching his many students, all of whom he thanks for their presence in his life, all of whom he wishes personal happiness and lives lived with passionate devotion to good causes.
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Visiting hours are 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, September 12, 2008 at the Ontario Home of Wappner Funeral Directors, 100 South Lexington-Springmill Road, Mansfield, Ohio 44906.
A mass of Christian burial will be held at Saint Peter’s Catholic Church in Mansfield at 10 a.m. Saturday.
JF’s ashes will be placed in Cherry Creek Cemetery in New York and in the Maine woods he loved.
JF’s ashes will be placed in Cherry Creek Cemetery in New York and in the Maine woods he loved.
In lieu of flowers, JF wanted memorials sent to the National Resources Defense Council, 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011 http://www.nrdc.org/
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Click here for a link to the Wappner Funeral Home online obituary.
Click here for a link to the Wappner Funeral Home online obituary Memory Tribute.
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In Memory Of J. F. Buckley 
I will never forgot the morning two years ago, while I was visiting my family in Southern California, that I decided to check my e-mail and found Jim’s first letter to the faculty about his illness. I casually opened the laptop, expecting some boring memos about my scheduling job and perhaps the usual spam, and instead found Jim’s notice to us that he expected to die, even sooner than he did. I remember, reading it through tears, wishing that if I ever had to write such a letter, let it be as fine as that one was: the grace, the dignity, even the humor, and the deep commitment to the knowledge that he had made the right choices in his life and had loved it all. He talked of his family of course, but also of his teaching and his life as a member of our faculty in terms I could deeply identify with. I have known Jim since he was a graduate student, and I always admired his gentle sweetness and his eager desire to know. And now, at the end of my own career of teaching, I can only assure those who have survived him and love him that he did, really, have the best job in the world and he knew it. That is something very few people are privileged to experience.
He will be missed by all of us and of course especially by our colleagues in Mansfield.
Marlene
By: Marlene Longenecker on September 10, 2008
at 8:05 am