Samuel Marshall Busselle

September 29, 1940 – July 31, 2026

Sam Busselle, Millerton resident for 50 years who dedicated himself to connecting people and improving life in his community, died peacefully July 31, 2026, at Woodland Pond, New Paltz, NY. Born in 1940, he was the son of architect Alfred Busselle and educator Martha Knapp Busselle. He grew up in Princeton, NJ, where he graduated from Lawrenceville School. At Yale he lived in Branford, was the Chief Printer and Sophomore counselor, and roomed with Tim Adams and Bob Anathan. He majored in Architecture and lettered in swimming. He was a member of Deke and Scroll and Key. After a master’s degree from the Yale School of Architecture, he taught high school for several years in the Boston area, where he met his wife, Rebecca.

Sam, Rebecca and her 7-year-old son, Wynne, moved to Manhattan, quickly expanding their family with the birth of Katrina and Max, all the while gut-renovating a floor of an abandoned SRO on St. Mark’s Place. On weekdays Sam left the lively East Village neighborhood by bicycle to work uptown on Fifth Avenue for the General Learning Corporation in the Environmental Services division. On weekends he tore down plaster walls, laid flooring, built bookcases, plumbed a kitchen and bathroom, and cut a door to a sizable outdoor rooftop where the family grew tomatoes, and the kids splashed in a plastic swimming pool. Strapped into kiddie seats on their parents’ bikes, with Wynne in the lead, the family explored New York City and picnicked in its parks.

After a few years, time came for a change. The family moved to Bo, Sierra Leone, West Africa, where they spent three extraordinary years as Peace Corps volunteers. As Architect for the Southern Province, Sam taught drafting to young men desperate for skills that might lead to jobs. He oversaw simple construction projects, fashioning blocks on site; he built a factory and the first ever morgue for the Bo Government Hospital. The Peace Corps experience permanently shaped his worldview and commitment to making a difference.

Dependent on a small Peace Corps readjustment allowance, no jobs, and no place to live, Sam and family returned to the United States during a recession in 1975. After a year renting in Stanfordville, they turned to Millerton and found a tumbled down house that had been a two-room farmstead around 1790 and expanded a century later. A weed field with clumps of burdock surrounded the dirt driveway. The house was stuccoed in dark cement. Inside were greasy kitchen walls, and a cabinet door dangled by its hinges. A family with 10 children had vacated after two second floor ceilings collapsed. But always forward thinking, Sam noted hand-hewn beams and, under bright red paint, an original brick chimney wall and Dutch oven. Worn linoleum gave him little hope for good floors beneath, but the attic held wide oak boards. Sam knew the house bones were venerable and solid. He had found a lifelong renovation, re-renovation, and maintenance project. He set to work making a home and finding a role in his new community.

He took a job with the NYS Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities as an architect/planner for the Wassaic Developmental Center campus, which had been mandated to upgrade or close. Twenty years later he retired after working tirelessly to help residents move out of an isolating institution into community homes and thoughtfully plan for the repurposing of the Wassaic Campus. He followed that with a planning role at the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Valkill, while giving much time and energy to addressing problems in the Dutchess Country criminal justice system. Working with the County’s Criminal Justice Council, Sam promoted the principles of restorative justice as he advocated with local officials. He was a meaningful contributor to the work of other City entities such as the Family Partnership Center, Catharine St Center, local foundations, and others in the belief that collective impact makes for a stronger community.

Sam’s volunteer roles began with a seat on the North East Town Board, followed by years on the Planning Board. But his deepest satisfaction came from co-founding, with Wendy Curtis, the North East Community Council, a group dedicated to improving local access to County agencies in this rural area. That group secured funding, acquired a building and became the thriving North East Community Center,
Sam loved rural life. He enjoyed splitting logs for the wood stoves, tended a vegetable garden, and got a kick out of briefly owning an aged tractor and a rickety pickup truck. He swam in any body of water he could find, rowed a scull on twin lakes, rollerbladed and biked on the Rail Trail, and hiked the nearby mountains. He loved Tanglewood, Music Mountain, Norfolk chamber music, and opera in Manhattan. He and Rebecca traveled in Europe, Africa, Japan, and Indonesia. He took never ending pleasure in his children and grandchildren. And just as he loved uniting people in a common cause, he loved a good party.

Admired and beloved by many, he is survived by his wife of 58 years, Rebecca, of Millerton, NY and Vineyard Haven; his son Wynne Morriss and wife Suzanne of Hastings-on-Hudson, NY; daughter Katrina Busselle and husband Ney Marks da Silva of Cold Spring, NY; and son Max Busselle and wife Juliet of Los Angeles, CA; his twin sister Harriet Barrow of Vineyard Haven, MA, sister Polly Bishop of Brooksville, ME, and predeceased by sister Lucy Myers. He will be dearly missed by his five adored grandchildren, Nick, Julia, Olivia, William and Alexandra, and nieces and nephews, Whit, Steve, Rob, Samantha, and Scott and their families.

On August 30 there was a very well-attended memorial party at his Millerton Home. Rebecca read his eloquent essay from our 50th Reunion Classbook (look it up!) followed by a touching poem from Katrina. Then his sons and grandkids spoke, all attesting to his extraordinary love and role-modeling for them.

Dickson Carroll writes: “I first met Sam at Martha’s Vineyard when we were both 15 (about 1955). Sam was a beach boy at the Vineyard Haven Yacht Club. (Our family belonged.) Sam and I became friends, and he suggested that I apply for the second beach boy position. Sam ran the launch taking sailors out to their boats, later going back to pick them up after races. I did other tasks. We were both on the swimming teams of our respective boarding schools. After work each day, to get in condition for the fall, we would take a long swim together out into the harbor. We would round a red obstruction buoy in the middle and then return (about a half mile swim). Sam’s sister, Harriett, became my first girlfriend.

“Senior year of high school, both having been accepted at Yale, we agreed to each bring a friend that had also been accepted to Yale, so we could all room together. (Sam brought Bill Gross, who was a swimmer at Lawrenceville, and I brought Paul Kelly from Andover.)

“After graduation, Sam and I attended the Yale Architectural school together. We toured early Paul Rudolph buildings in Florida during spring vacation. (Rudolph was the head of the architectural school.) I asked Sam to be best man at my wedding in 1966.

“Then, after graduation, our paths diverted. I saw him briefly, maybe three times in the intervening years and I had one long reminiscing telephone conversation about our youth together several months before he died. But it wasn’t until l read his obituary in the Poughkeepsie Journal that I learned what a long, distinguished and varied career he had had, which was very different from mine.”

John Stewart writes: “Sam was geographically my closest Yale friend and for the last 15 years and we saw each other frequently for dinners, concerts, and road trips up to Northampton to visit classmate Paul Gorman. Sam’s true spirit was revealed by his concern for Paul’s welfare, beyond visits, helping arrange housing and kinds of care. I have a trove of Sam stories but perhaps my favorite was in July of ’63 meeting Dixie and Sam, Sam’s sister Polly and another friend in Rome. Dinner the first night and then hitchhiking through Italy. We’d divide up in three groups, arranging to meet at the next town, including Siena, Verona (two operas in the famed Arena) and Florence for a week in a youth hostel which was a former home of Mussolini. We’d rise early – you had to leave early – bus into Florence and look at every statue, every church and every painting. Dixie and Sam were architecture students and therefore capable of lengthy meditative stares. Sam was the ringleader, finding bread and cheese for lunch and wine in the evening. I will always remember Sam’s search for ‘visitors,’ especially one at a lovely dusk in a lovely Fiesole olive orchard.”

Donations in Sam’s memory may be made to the Family Partnership Center, c/o Family Services at www.familyservicesny.org.

— John Harger Stewart