Many of us who knew Alliance Française member Patrick Buffet learned with sadness that he died on October 30, 2022, in Shelburne, where he was a resident of the Wake Robin retirement community. A longtime great supporter of the AFLCR, Patrick joined the board in 2003 and served for several years on its Education Committee. He actively participated in many of the organization’s activities, for instance faithfully attending the monthly déjeuners at various area restaurants. It was at a French-related lecture at the University of Vermont that I first got to know him, and in succeeding years our paths crossed at the Alliance Française lunches and at Elder Education for Enrichment lectures, for which he became a member of the Program Committee. Patrick attended some of the Alliance Française reading groups, where another participant saw him as “warm, congenial, and engaged.”
on researching genealogy in France
Educated as an electrical and electronics engineer at France’s Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, Patrick emigrated to the United States while a young man. With us, he shared his views as a native Frenchman and also his fascinating experiences, ranging from his childhood in the Occupied France of World War II to the workings of the French educational system then and now; he was often a resource too for the meaning and structure of elements of the French language. In various settings, Patrick recounted his travels to visit his French family in Versailles and his wife Elizabeth’s family in Denmark; or again his vacation trip to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and other nearby countries.
More locally, Patrick’s travels included active membership in a bicycling group of IBM engineers who took outings in northern Vermont, New York, and Québec. One member of those excursions relates that fellow nonfrancophone cyclists were highly interested in and amused by the mutual issues he and the Québécois had in understanding one another’s accents and vocabulary.
In a very different mode, during the early years of this century, Patrick acted as Honorary Consul of France in Vermont, where, working in close cooperation with the French Consulate General, he could certify a translation or legalize a document. Perhaps befitting an Honorary Consul, Patrick cut a striking figure with his full head of white hair and pointed beard and an unfailingly natty way of dressing.
Patrick, with his outgoing personality and deep knowledge of and involvement in the language and culture of his native France, very palpably contributed to the vitality of our Alliance Française, and he will be long remembered.
—Grant Crichfield
December 2022
Photos provided by John Fisher at Vermont French-Canadian Genealogical Society and Lise Veronneau.
