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Jackie Buck, tuba player, founding member of the Pamlico Community Band and owner of Hurricane Boatyard and Marina in Bayboro, died Wednesday at Craven Regional Medical Center. He was 75.

Becky Ackiss, who conducts the Pamlico Community Band, credits “Mr. Jackie” as the spark that got the band started a few years ago.

Jackie Buck playing tuba with the Pamlico Community Band on July 4th. It was to be his last performance with the band he’d helped start.

Jackie Buck played tuba in the Navy during the Korean War. He served — and played in the ship’s band — on the USS Princeton CV37 in the X Division Sky Forward Lookout.

After the war, he came back to Pamlico County — he’d grown up in Reelsboro. He worked as a diesel mechanic and operated the Hurricane Boatyard and Marina.

And didn’t pick up a tuba again for half a century.

Becky Ackiss notes that his wife, “Ms. Rachel had never heard him play.”

That changed in January of 2003 when Jackie Buck went on eBay and bought a tuba. He did that to play in what Ackiss calls, “a little church band” at Bayboro’s United Methodist Church.

In quick time, he began making up for all those decades of not playing the tuba.

“Within a couple of months,” Ackiss recounts, “he’d gone to play in the Craven Community Concert Band in New Bern and was nagging me to go, too, to play my eBay euphonium. I … finally went with him and, he was right, I loved it. Then he began pushing me to organize a community band for Pamlico County, saying he just knew there were enough musicians here to have one”

That came together the next year when the Methodist church band was asked to play at the annual meeting of the Pamlico Arts Council in 2004. “We rehearsed for a month, adding a few community members from outside the church and performed for the Arts Council with about a 14-member band. After that, we decided to keep on playing together and became Pamlico Community Band.”

The Pamlico Community Band on July 4, playing for the opening of this year’s Croakerfest. Jackie Buck is on right, behind the tuba.

An offshoot of the Pamlico Community Band Jackie Buck helped found, is the Croaker Band which played in this year’s Croakerfest parade. On the outside, from left to right are Becky Ackiss, Chris Mele and Jackie Buck.

The band Jackie Buck instigated, has since more than doubled in size. It now has 31 members.

His last performances with the band were at this summer’s Croakerfest. The band played next to Lupton Park, Jackie Buck anchoring the left side of the stage. In the parade the next day, he played as part of the smaller, Croakerfest Band. He had just learned a few days before, that he had lung cancer.

Jackie Buck hadn’t played a tuba in 50 years, but once he started up again in 2003, he got the Pamlico Community Band started.

At its next concert, on October 5th, the Pamlico Community Band will dedicate “St. Louis Blues” to Jackie Buck. “He was really looking forward to playing that number with us,” Becky Ackiss says, “but was too sick. I will always regret our not playing it July 4th”

In addition to his devotion to the bands, another Bayboro resident recalls how much Jackie Buck loved the Bay River. Candace Young, an early morning walker, herself, says she’d find him many mornings at dawn near the Bayboro Town Dock. “He said he loved the river at that hour when the sun lit it up.” That scene made up, he told her, “for following his doctors orders to get exercise.”

John A. Buck, Jr leaves Rachel, his wife of 49 years; his daughter, Jackie Lee Buck Taylor; his son John A. Buck, III and his wife, Carol Cahoon Buck, 6 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

A memorial service for Jackie Buck is set for 3pm Saturday, September 13th at Bryant Funeral Home in Alliance. There will be tubas present. The three other members of the tuba quartet, “TubaFour” (say it out loud…) will be playing. An empty chair will be left for “Mr. Jackie.”

Instead of flowers, the Jackie Buck’s family asks that donations be made to the Pamlico County High School Marching Band, P.O. Box 946, Bayboro, NC 28515.

Posted Thursday September 11, 2008 by Melinda Penkava