Remembering Jeff Buck - by Brian Lennon
Wednesday, February 14th would have been Jeffrey Buck’s 24th birthday. But he wasn’t celebrating the day with his friends and family.
Instead, his friends and family were gathered around him while he laid in a casket inside Frank T. Mazur’s Funeral Home in Dickson City, Pennsylvania.
Death, like life, is not always fair.
And as a 47-year-old father with two adult children of my own around Jeff’s age, who also both knew him personally, it was not easy for any of us to rationalize or comprehend this fact.
I also knew Jeff. I actually once worked with Jeff at Wegmans, a family-owned grocery store chain.
When I started at Wegmans, I was one of the managers who oversaw the front end of the store, which included the cashiers, service desk, accounting office, among other things, and maybe, most importantly, Helping Hands.
Helping Hands is the corporate-speak name for the cart guys.
Jeff was a member of Helping Hands. He was also trained as a cashier, but Jeff preferred to work and be outside, wrangling shopping carts, helping and talking with customers on their way out to the car, or just shooting the breeze with the other cart guys.
In times of front end crisis, we sometimes had to ask Helping Hands, guys like Jeff, to come in and help out on register. As soon as he came in, he was already asking if he could go back outside. And he wouldn’t stop asking. This would also include him giving me puppy dog eyes!
Jeff could be a pain in the ass, but it was impossible to get mad at him because he was just so likable and charming. And always smiling.
Honestly, Jeff was one of the nicest guys you could ever meet. He could talk to anyone, and most times he did.
I recognized early on working with Jeff that he was bigger than Helping Hands, bigger than Wegmans. Like me, he recognized the sometimes ridiculous and ludicrous nature of the daily tasks we were given and the situations we would be thrown into, as those that deal with the public sometimes are, during weekends, holidays, or a worldwide pandemic.
Eventually, Jeff moved on from the front end. He helped out on shifts in maintenance, and then to the produce department.
Eventually, Jeff moved on from Wegmans too. In addition to working for the local Triple-A baseball team’s in-game broadcasts, he graduated in 2022 with a degree in communications and digital media from Marywood University, Jeff went on to work for local television stations — Fox56 and WNEP — as a freelance photographer and director.
But Jeff was bigger than local television, too.
The last time I saw Jeff was inside the Sheetz on Mount Pleasant Drive in Scranton, near the local high school.
It was late last summer or maybe early fall. He was standing in line in front of me. We were both on our lunch breaks. He was now working as a transporter, driving a patient van for Geisinger Health System, a regional health care provider here in Northeast Pennsylvania. He told me he was thinking about going back to school for nursing, and had picked up the Geisinger gig in hopes of earning a scholarship the company awards employees entering medical professions.
As always, it was great to see Jeff. I always enjoyed being in his company, and could always count on enjoying a laugh, and leaving with a smile.
I left Sheetz thinking to myself, Jeff would make a great nurse. Nurses have to like people and be able to relate to anyone. I know because I’m married to a nurse, my sister’s a nurse, and my aunt’s a nurse.
Jeff’s future seemed limitless.
At the time of his death, Jeff was back in school, enrolled in courses to become a cardiac ultrasound technician at Lackawanna College, while still working for Geisinger.
When I think back to myself at the age 24, and what I’ve done since, it makes Jeff’s untimely death that more painful and senseless. It doesn’t seem fair that a guy like Jeff will never get married, have children, be somebody else’s boss, passing on the life and work lessons he’d learned, maybe a few from people like me.
Jeff will also never get the chance to light up a room with his smile for a patient.
Instead, Jeff’s life has become another lesson, and an all too frighteningly familiar one.
At his funeral Mass on Thursday morning at Sacred Heart of Jesus in Peckville, where his mother, Denise, gave a beautiful, heart-wrenching eulogy for her son, Fr. Andy Kurovsky, pastor of Sacred Heart, also made it a point during his homily to speak to the large number of Jeff’s friends, all in their early to mid twenties.
He warned them all that the next drink, the next shot, the next pill, might be one too many. As a person living in recovery himself, as Fr. Andy himself pointed out, he speaks these words from a place and a perspective as one who knows the pains of addiction, and from a place in his heart for his ministry to others.
As he made clear to those in attendance, all who were there because we loved Jeff, that he was not alone and that he was most assuredly loved, before reminding all of us: “You are not alone!”
One never felt alone in the presence of Jeff Buck. He wouldn’t allow it.
Jeff was always more than a “helping hand,” and while I prayed for him, his mother, sister, family and friends on Thursday morning, my prayer was a simple one. One that Fr. Andy made clear for all of us, that now Jeff rests comfortably and in peace in the welcoming, helping hands of his savior, Jesus Christ.
Amen.
You can read Jeff Buck’s obituary here.
If you or someone you know is suffering from substance or mental health disorders, there are resources available to you:
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Servces Administration (SAMHSA’s) National Helpline is a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders.
1-800-662-4357
988 Suicide and Crisis Hotline
988 can be used by anyone, any time, at no cost. Trained crisis response professionals can support individuals considering suicide, self-harm, or any behavioral or mental health need for themselves or people looking for help for a loved one experiencing a mental health crisis. Lifeline services are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week at no cost to the caller.
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