WATERVILLE – Elizabeth Lowe King Buschmann died in Waterville on Jan. 1.

On Sept. 28, 1918, during the influenza epidemic, Sue was born, the third child of four to the Rev. Dr. Claude H. King and Elizabeth Lowe Hedge King, in Parkersburg, W.Va. As her father pastored Methodist congregations, Sue and her brothers received their education in the cities of Muncie, Ind., and Bradford, Pa.

Summers and holidays often meant family trips to the Hedge family home in East Dennis, Mass.: her mother’s ancestral birth home. Close by, the shore of Cape Cod Bay, the scrub pine and oak forests, the coastal pastures and cranberry bogs, all of which had sustained and supported the needs of earlier generations, made the village with its generations of family ties a haven for the young Elizabeth’s explorations. It was here that she met her future husband, August Buschmann, professor of German at Bates College in Lewiston. Her father, Dr. King, married them on Oct. 25, 1940, shortly before his death in February 1941.

Gus and Sue moved into and raised their seven children in the 1849-built Nash farmhouse at 227 College St., Lewiston, (now a Bates College student residency named Nash House), while Gus taught at Bates until his retirement in the spring of 1971. Until his death in August 1986, they maintained residency at 227 College St., enjoyed rustic experiences at their camp on the shore of East Carry Pond in Maine, and maintained a garden and an active family social life from Sue’s ancestral home, left to her by her mother, in East Dennis, Mass.

Because Gus spent sabbatical leaves from Bates in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland to strengthen his German language curriculum, she had multiple opportunities with Gus to create and maintain many decades-long European friendships. Upon his retirement, they traveled west for the first time, spending several months on two occasions in New Zealand, making new friends, touring the country by public transportation, and hiking the wilds, such as on the famous Milford Track – a five-day guided hut-to-hut tramp in the alpine valley forests, and mountain pass meadows of Fiordland National Park.

A childhood dream was realized in 1988 when she and her life-long friend, Lois Webster, celebrated her 70th birthday in Shanghai, during a much-anticipated, several weeks’ tour of China.

For several years, she and her second husband, Howard Weeks of Manomet, Mass., who passed away in 2004, resided at the crest of a hill overlooking Messalonskee Lake in Sidney. In recent years, she has resided in Waterville, to be near her faithful medical support team and, most importantly, near her children, six of whom live within an hour’s drive of Waterville.

She is survived by her younger brother, Bob King and wife, Diane King, of East Dennis, Mass.; by her children, Caroline Barnes of Knox, Marion True and husband, Bob True, of Westboro, Mass., Ed Buschmann and wife, Louise Buschmann, of Lewiston, Elizabeth Jackie Smith and husband, Bob Smith, of Pleasant Ridge Plantation, Wally Buschmann and wife, Cindy Buschmann, of Sidney, Chris Buschmann and wife, Lois Buschmann, of Farmington and Fritz Buschmann and wife, Marg Buschmann, of Harmony; 17 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren.