William Denham Buel

William D. BuelJune 17, 1930 — October 26, 2026Despite my degrees in English and journalism, the best advice about writing I ever received came from William D Buel. Suffering from writer’s block one night during my first month in journalism school I called my dad, to be gifted with the timeless advice, “Just write something. It’s easier to edit yourself than it is to write well the first time.” With that in mind, please accept this inadequate tribute.William Denham Buel, 96, my father and role model, died Monday from complications of Covid-19. He was a happily retired industrial psychologist, reluctantly retired outdoorsman, Rockefeller Republican turned Clinton Democrat turned fierce opponent of Donald Trump, and the most principled man I knew.Dad was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania at a time before “planned parenthood.” His parents were both 42 when he came along. He was 18 years younger than his sister, Betty, whom he adored; and 17 years younger than his brother, Eddie, whom he ended up taking care of in late life.Given the age of his parents, young Bill spent lots of time alone, becoming a lifelong outdoorsman and armchair misanthrope. As a teenager during World War II, he trapped muskrats, earning a healthy income at $2 a pelt. He also acquired a lifelong passion for fishing, which ultimately led him to fish hundreds of lakes across Florida, Northern Wisconsin, and everywhere he traveled during his wide-ranging professional career.Brilliant as he was, young Bill was bored by school and had no interest in college. So he enlisted in the Army, and was sent to Korea in the years before the war. Two years of Army bureaucracy enhanced the appeal of higher education, and dad left the service to attend Allentown Business College, a secretarial and bookkeeping school. Though he wasn’t really interested in that either, it evidently beat the U.S. Army.Alas, world events had other plans for dad, and upon the outbreak of the Korean War, the Army sent him back there for another two years. He was soon involved in the U.S. evacuation from Hungman, Korea — the so-called Christmas Miracle, a Dunkirk-style mass evacuation in which he was one of the last American troops to flee what is now North Korea. (Thanks here to my good friend Raymond Lin for getting my dad to talk about this, many decades after I had given up trying to get him to say anything about the war.)Upon his release from the military, dad attended Temple University in Philadelphia, where he obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology. For his Ph.D., he attended The Ohio State University, and remained a proud lifelong fan of the Buckeyes.Ohio State was also where he met my mother, Susan Welling, a psych undergrad. On their first date, a trip to the local ice rink, mom broke her ankle. Dad became seriously attentive to her needs as she recovered. One thing led to another, and they soon wed. I followed shortly thereafter, followed by my brothers Eric and Doug.Dad was a pioneering industrial psychologist — a mash-up of statistics, standardized testing, and human resources. Working first in industry and then as a consultant to the Fortune 500, he used statistical research techniques to help clients identify potential hires and retain promising employees. After federal laws began placing limits on hiring practices that led to unequal racial outcomes, he helped employers craft new strategies that moved beyond testing.We moved to suburban Chicago when my father took a job with the Pure Oil Company Research Center. He later worked for Science Research Associates (SRA), the company whose self-directed reading comprehension tests were in a little metal tub at the front of most of my elementary school classrooms. Some time in the mid Sixties, he took a position with the Vernon Psychological Laboratory — beginning his career as a traveling consultant, but also contributing to the failure of his marriage. In 1968, we moved to Tampa, where he took a position with Byron Harless, Reid & Associates, where he worked until his retirement, around age 60. At all of these companies, he published highly regarded research in The Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Journal, and other scholarly publications.Perhaps my proudest memory of dad was the story he told about being summoned by the founder of a Georgia-based fast food chain famous for its chicken sandwiches and long drive-thru lines. The man asked my father to design his company hiring tools that would help him justify not hiring black employees. And suffice it to say, black was not the word he used. My father swiftly told the executive he was not the man for that job, then got up and walked out on him.Life in Florida brought out the outdoorsman in Bill. Although he and I fished frequently in Wisconsin during our time in Chicago, in Florida the fishing was everywhere. He bought the first of many small fishing boats and dragged me along for a day of fishing most every weekend until my parents divorced. We’d fish for seatrout in Ozona, shellcrackers on Lake Okeechobee, bluegills on the Withlacoochee River, and bass on hundreds of lakes across Southwest and Central Florida.Following their ill-advised remarriage and subsequent redivorce, my parents split for good in 1973. Shortly thereafter, dad bought our current home in Lutz, on an isthmus next to the canal connecting Lake Harvey to our lake, Lake Virginia. From that point on, he basically abandoned dating for fishing. He thought nothing of driving 100 miles or more to fish a new lake he had spied off a highway. We’d go charging through some orange grove, boat trailer swerving behind his trusty Jeep Wagoneer, undoubtedly trespassing more than a few times. Occasionally we’d have to dig a car wheel out of the sand. And if there happened to be a bar near the drive back home, we would stop for a couple cokes and beers — never more than two — and perhaps a few games of bar shuffleboard. That is how I acquired my love of wilderness — plus a robust collection of stuffed largemouth, smallmouth, stripers, pike, crappies, even bluegills.Dad pretended to hate people. But if you took him to a party he invariably ended up surrounded by a crowd, telling stories and dropping off-the-cuff one-liners. He was the guy who would organize everyone on Lake Virginia to pay for a school of sterile grass carp to keep the lake from being overrun with invasive weeds. And thanks to his hunger to fish new waters, he secured fishing permissions from about 250 complete strangers who happened to live on lakes that looked promising. He systematically drove the country roads between Tampa and Ocala looking for water, then asked surprised homeowners if he could back his boat trailer across their yard. For a laugh, he always promised not to steal too much.He was a creature of habit, who drank a single, weak scotch and water each afternoon at exactly 3pm. He loved nothing better than his daily drive in the county. When I moved back to Florida, his 10-month old Subaru Forrester already had about 41,000 miles on it, which meant that he was driving an average of 141 miles each day. Much of that mileage was logged during his daily trips to eat breakfast and lunch — even during the height of the Covid pandemic.So it was ironic that Covid eventually struck him down. But even in dying, Bill Buel was true to his code. In keeping with his favorite saying — “Patience is not a virtue; patience is a waste of time” — my father’s death was swift and painless. He died facing the cypress swamp on the far shore of his beloved Lake Virginia.If you haven’t gotten vaccinated recently for Covid or the flu, please do so. It will help keep you healthy, while flipping the finger to those idiots in Tallahassee and The White House. William D. Buel would approve. — Stephen Buel