As near as we can determine, Mary Wakefield Buxton’s byline first appeared in the Southside Sentinel on Nov. 8, 1984. Until today, her writings have appeared on our pages almost weekly for 41 years.
The prolific columnist, with opinions about many things, serious and light-hearted, died last Friday at age 84 from complications following heart surgery. She will be laid to rest at Christ Church Parish (Episcopal) on Tuesday, Nov. 18.
In one of her early columns, Mary recalled falling in love with Urbanna during a “whiskey run” while she and her husband, Chip, were staying at The Tides Inn in Irvington. Before (and after) liquor-by-the-drink was legal, the hotel’s yacht, Miss Ann, brought guests to visit Urbanna and its ABC store every Saturday morning.
After seeing our town on that 1968 trip, Mary vowed to live here one day. They found their cottage on the river and moved from Newport News in 1984.
The former college English teacher quickly approached the Sentinel with the idea for Journeys, a weekly column about observations in Urbanna and nearby. Three years later One Woman’s Opinion was launched to give Mary an opportunity to debate local, state and even national issues and express opinions that were solely hers and not associated with the paper.
We believe her columns have contributed to important community dialogue. When tackling the hot topics of her time, she was fearless. Religion, education, politics, town and county government, and especially women’s rights often lit up her keyboard. For some of her opinions she was criticized in Letters to the Editor and she mentioned recently she was even slapped by an irate reader on one occasion. She remained courageous and never backed down on her beliefs.
Intermingled among her column topics were tales about her dogs, home life along the river, the changing seasons, memories of growing up in Ohio, her widowed father moving to Middlesex and falling in love, detailed travelogues about adventures she and Chip shared, riding around Urbanna with Jimmy Pitts on his Harley Davidson motorcycle on New Year’s Eve, and much more. In recent years she has even added a few serialized fictional tales about local life and thinly disguised local characters.
Mary also wrote books, 14 of them published by Rappahannock Press Inc., the Sentinel’s corporate entity. She was a happy and energetic person, always laughing about something (one former Sentinel employee noted that when Mary was in the office everyone was smiling!), so she was an excellent marketing person. Most of her books were printed at the Sentinel, bound in Richmond, and Mary marketed each one to booksellers and on Amazon.
The first book was a staple-bound collection of her Journeys columns but her first original bound work, Help, I’m Being Held Captive in Virginia, really launched her book writing career in 1990. There was chatter about it all over the state, and it was her best seller. Apparently before satire was widely known in Virginia, she went on several radio talk shows to promote the book and some hosts suggested she should leave Virginia if she didn’t like it. The cover, which pictured Mary clinging to a flag pole flying a Confederate flag, sold the book!
Between 1990 and 2019, 14 books by Mary were designed at the Sentinel and printed here or in Richmond. One of the books was a commissioned history of the Chesapeake Corporation in West Point designed in a “coffee table” style and size. The book was printed elsewhere in both hard cover and paperback versions.
Mary also authored The Private War of Willam Styron, published by Brandylane Publishers Inc. of Richmond.
All of the book titles are listed on SSentinel.com.
Mary was obviously a very disciplined person who followed her father’s advice to “keep on writing” to the very end. We are grateful that she shared that writing with our Sentinel readers for over 40 years. She is missed.
— Fred and Bettie Lee Gaskins, Publishers
