Harold I. Buskirk, former chief of administration for the Maryland Department of Budget and Fiscal Planning, died Friday from complications of a stroke at Hanover Hospital in Hanover, Pa.
The former longtime Sykesville resident was 86.
The son of a coal miner and a homemaker, Mr. Buskirk was born in Frostburg and raised in Midlothian, where he graduated in 1942 from Beall High School.
He enlisted in the Army and served as a military policeman in Hawaii. After being discharged in 1945, he earned a degree from the old Eastern College of Commerce and Law in Baltimore, and went to work for what is now the state Department of Natural Resources.
He then joined the state Department of Budget and Fiscal Planning Budget, rising to chief of administration. He retired in 1983.
He later lived in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Abbottstown, Pa., before moving to the Brethren Home in New Oxford, Pa., in 2009.
Mr. Buskirk was a member and past master of Oriental Lodge 143 and was a past worthy patron of Freedom Chapter Order of the Eastern Star 87. He was a member of the Boumi Temple, where he had been active in the Jesters, Divan and drum corps, and was a past recorder.
He was a member of the Western Maryland Shrine Club and was a former past associate guardian of Bethel 9 Job's Daughters in Eldersburg.
He was a former member of St . Paul's United Methodist Church in Sykesville, and was a member of First United Methodist Church in Hanover, Pa.
Mr. Buskirk was an avid vegetable gardener.
"We never had to buy vegetables and what he grew, my mother canned," said a daughter, Carla J. Czako of Palm Desert, Calif.
Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. Wednesday at the Jeffrey N. Zumbrun Funeral Home, 6028 Sykesville Road in Eldersburg.
Also surviving are his wife of 60 years, the former Christine Fatkin; another daughter, Cheryl A. English of Sykesville; and two grandsons.