Janet Buehler

Janet Buehler, Teacher of Social Studies and English in the Dartmouth Public Schools, Friends Academy, Fisher College and other schools in New York and Connecticut, passed away on September 11th, 2022, after a long struggle with an incurable disease.

Janet was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1946 to Paul Plaisted and Elsie Roes Plaisted. As a young girl, Janet firmly resisted entering P.S. 152 on 23rd Street in Flatbush, Brooklyn, preferring instead to follow her Nana Elsie Roes home to cook and read stories. Eventually, Janet warmed to the classroom, graduating from high school in Chappaqua, New York.

Janet grew up in a family of pianists and organists going back to her great grandfather, Mark Huntress Plaisted of the Boston firm Hutchings & Plaisted, Organ Builders. Her lifelong love of music and drama was stirred by countless visits to Broadway shows and museums, concerts, and botanical gardens in The City. At Wittenberg University, she volunteered in the college’s daily Chapel Choir and grew in her love of American and British History. She was inducted into Phi Alpha Theta, the national honorary for historians.

One of Janet’s greatest gifts as an educator was to recognize the human potential of every student, seeing far beyond whatever obstacles stood in their way. She routinely offered up an enormous amount of her own personal time if it could benefit her students, including numerous extra assignments like chaperoning field trips to Boston and Washington, as well as leading Friends Academy’s poetry journal.

Janet is survived by her loving husband of nearly 54 years, David; her son and daughter-in-law, Jacob and Hope of Bethesda, Maryland; her sister and brother-in-law Doris and Rodney Peterson of Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina; and a host of cousins, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren who loved her dearly.

A Memorial Service will be held on Saturday, November 12th, 2022, at 11 AM in Fairhaven, Massachusetts at Trinity Lutheran Church, 16 Temple Place.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made in Janet’s name to the Poetry Foundation.