Obituary: L. Irene Buck

Funeral Services for L. Irene Buck Planned Tuesday

Funeral services for L. Irene Buck, 65, of 10017 Merrill Springs rd., supervisor of art in the Madison public schools for 30 years who died Saturday at a hospital here, will be at 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Fitch-Lawrence funeral home with the Rev. Max Gaebler officiating.

Instrumental is developing art education in Madison, she was largely responsible for the annual Salon of School Art at the Madison Free Library.

Miss Buck became ill at her home two weeks ago and entered the hospital Monday.

Born in Lansing, Mich., she received an art degree from the Chicago Art Institute in 1910. After further work at Columbia University she taught at Hillside school near Spring Green -- the buildings that now house Frank Lloyd Wright's School at Taliesin. Later she taught at Park Ridge, Ill. and then came to Madison high school (now Central).

Her philosophy of teaching was the encouragement of creativeness through freedom of expression, rather than through strict discipline.

When she was teaching in Madison, she took advanced courses at the University of Wisconsin and Columbia.

Miss Buck is a past president of the Madison Art Assn. of which she was an active member, and she had also been president of Altrusa.

Surviving is one brother, Carroll W. Buck, of Chicago, Ill.

Friends are requested to omit flowers and asked to donate to the American Cancer Society instead.

Originally published in the Wisconsin State Journal on February 15, 1953. At this time, obituaries were still "news stories," written by newspaper staff, not families.