Kenneth L. Buffum

Born	1928-12-12 Woburn, MA
Died	2019-03-28 Burlington, MA
Town Meeting
In Office	1958 - 1971 1979 - 2007 2009 - 2019
School Committee
In Office	1962 - 1966
Shawsheen Valley Regional Vocational School Committee
In Office	1967 - 2019
Veterans' Agent
In Office	1984 - 2019
Preceded by	Chester C. Sandberg
Succeeded by	Joseph J. Ruggiero II

Kenneth L. Buffum (December 12, 1928 - March 28, 2019) served Billerica for more than sixty years, as a town meeting member, a member of two school committees, the town's Veterans' Agent and director of veterans' services, and co-founder of the Billerica Food Pantry. He was born in Woburn, the son of Eldridge and Anna Buffum, grew up in Roxbury, and served in the United States Navy during the Second World War. His obituary counts 61 years in Billerica, and his wife, Margaret T. (Mann) Buffum, died before him.

He was named to the town's Industrial Commission in 1957 and was elected a town meeting member for most of the years from 1958 to 2018. He ran for the Board of Selectmen in 1958, 1959 and 1960 without success. In 1962 he was elected to an unexpired one-year term on the School Committee, was re-elected for three years in 1963, and served as the committee's vice chairman; he lost his seat in the election of 1966.

In 1967 Billerica voters elected him to the Shawsheen Valley Regional Vocational School Committee, the board of the new regional district formed by Bedford, Billerica, Burlington, Tewksbury and Wilmington in 1965, and he served on it for more than fifty years, until his death. He was its chairman in 1969 and 1970, when the committee accepted the construction bid of $3,826,739, began construction, and voted to name the building Shawsheen Valley Technical High School, and he was its secretary-treasurer for many years afterward. In 2018 the district dedicated its newly renovated swimming pool to him, and it is now the Kenneth L. Buffum Pool.

In 1978 he joined the town's Veterans' Services Department as its investigator, working under Chester C. Sandberg; the department's report for 1979 said that "Mr. Buffum's days consist of home and field investigations on all applications filed." At the 1984 town meeting he presented Sandberg a plaque from the Middlesex County Veterans Agents Association, and when Sandberg retired that year Buffum was appointed Veterans' Agent and full-time director of the department, which he led, also as the town's graves registration officer, until 2019, 41 years after he joined it. With his secretary Marie O'Rourke he started the Billerica Food Pantry, which he directed from 1990 to 2018; in 2018 a new Billerica Community Pantry, Inc. was formed to carry on its work.

He died at Lahey Hospital in Burlington on March 28, 2019, at the age of 90, and was buried in Fox Hill Cemetery. The town's tribute, quoted in the Lowell Sun, said that "He has helped countless Veterans, residents, and children."

Kenneth L. Buffum

Kenneth L. Buffum

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