Education
He attended college at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Architecture in 1915.
He attended college at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Architecture in 1915.
During World War I, he was the officer in charge of the United States Navy Camouflage Section, which designed and tested camouflage for American ships, both military and civilian (Van Buskirk 1919). Born in Brooklyn, New York, his birth name was Charles Harold Van Buskirk. During World War I, Van Buskirk was a lieutenant in the United States Naval Reserve Force.
Initially connected with the Submarine Defense Association, in March 1918 he was put in charge of the Camouflage Section, a newly formed government unit within the Bureau of Construction and Repair (Skerrett 1919:101).
The Camouflage Section had two subsections, the Design Subsection (located in Washington District of Columbia) and the Research Subsection (located at Eastman Kodak Laboratories in Rochester, New York). The former, which was largely made up of artists, was led by a painter named Everett L. Warner, while the latter, whose members where mostly scientists, was under the direction of Eastman Kodak’s head physicist, Loyd A. Jones (Warner 1919:105-106).
Van Buskirk was the executive head of the two subsections, which included making certain that the patterns produced by these units were being correctly adapted to merchant ships by civilian painters. The task of commissioning painters to apply dazzle camouflage patterns to the ships was given to a civilian agency, the Emergency Fleet Corporation (Van Buskirk 1919:227).
In 1944, the Van Buskirks moved to Houston, Texas, where he was a coach and instructor of fencing at Rice University for more than twenty years, and where, in 1968, the Van Buskirk Sabre Tournament was established.
Van Buskirk’s skills as a fencer led to his being a member of the United States Olympic fencing team in 1924, 1928 and 1932. A member of the United States Fencing Association (USFA) Hall of Fame, he died in Harris County, Texas, in 1980.