The elder of two sons born to Carl Frederick and Katherine (Kuhn) Buechner, Carl Frederick Buechner was born in Manhattan on July 11, 1926.
Until their father’s death from carbon monoxide poisoning in an automobile in 1936, Frederick, who never used his first name, and his brother James attended a different school in a different town every year as their father moved from job to job.
The inheritances of both parents, who came from upper-class families, were lost during the Great Depression. Frederick enrolled in New Jersey’s Lawrenceville School in 1939. His first poems were published in its literary journal, and he received his diploma in 1943.
Despite being inducted into the Army during the war, he only spent a year at Princeton. He went back to Princeton after the war and graduated. He leaves behind his wife, three daughters—Katherine B. Arthaud, Dinah Buechner-Vischer, and Sharman B. Altshuler—and ten grandchildren in addition to his son-in-law.
Though Mr. Buechner had recently resided in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Rutland, Vermont, and Hobe Sound, Florida, he penned the majority of his works in Pawlet, Vermont.