Readers of HISTARCH who worked in San Diego at the Royal Presidio with Jack
Williams or on the Fort Guijarros project with Ron May will be saddened to
learn that C. Fred Buchanan passed away on March 12, 2007 and a memorial
celebration of his life will be held at his home tomorrow, Saturday, March 31 (email
Ron May at [log in to unmask] (mailto:[log in to unmask]) for the address).
For those who did not have the pleasure of meeting or knowing Fred, you can
access the San Diego State University Occasional Archaeology Papers at
_www.SOAP.sdsu.edu_ (http://www.SOAP.sdsu.edu) (see Part 3) and download his article
on reverse engineering of the 1796-1835 architectural ruins of the Spanish
shore battery and watercolor renderings of how Fred believed the fort
appeared. Fred began his remarkable career as a farmer in Battlecreek, Michigan and
nearly finished an engineering program at the University of Michigan when the
United States Army drafted his entire class and shipped twenty-one of them
off to participate in the China-Burma Campaign during World War II. While
attempting to deliver a truckload of metal pipes for construction of water and
fuel lines, Japanese artillery hit his position and his truck tumbled off the
Burma Road toward enemy lines. Fred managed to escape, but lost his left eye in
the process, and returned to duty to finish out the war. He returned in 1945
to complete his civil engineering degree and worked for the International
Boundary Commission and then the United States Navy, where he retired as
Superintendent of Public Works in San Diego. During those years, he was first on
site when the United States Army decommissioned Fort Rosecrans and managed to
save all the architectural and engineering drawings of the post that spanned
back to 1872 (from being incinerated) and had them microfilmed and eventually
shipped to the U.S. National Archives. Fred also studied the Spanish tile
rubble eroding out of an earthen fill bank at Ballast Point, which the Navy
developed as a submarine base in the early 1960s. Fred joined the Fort Guijarros
Archaeology Project in 1982 and took on the challenge of analyzing more than
1,200 broken tiles, hundreds of pounds of whitewashed stucco, mapped thousands
of cobblestones, and correlated the 1772 treatise on Spanish fortification
with tiles from Fort Guijarros to create drawings of portions of the walls,
which led to the watercolor paintings in the 1990s. Fred also helped design the
adaptation of the 1940 U.S. Army hospital morgue into a humidity and
temperature controlled artifact storage facility in which the entire collection of
400 boxes of tiles and Spanish artifacts are now preserved for scholarly
research. Fred analyzed all the architectural and general metal remains from the
mid 19th century Ballast Point whaling station and Chinese fishing camp and a
20th century Army quartermaster building, catalogued photographs and maps
before retiring from archaeology in 2005. He was an outstanding avocational
archaeologist, good friend to all who worked on the project, and ended life
knowing he made a difference in the lives of others, both now and in the future.
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.
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