Clement T. Buckman (1889-1978)
CONNECTION TO TULARE COUNTY AGRICULTURE: “Buck” Buckman founded what has become one of the nation’s most prominent firms specializing in agricultural insurance and risk management.
Clement T. “Buck” Buckman, was a sportsman all of his life. Growing up in Visalia, California, where he was born in 1889, Buck played football and baseball in high school, and like most rural boys, “grew up with guns.”
Buck was considered one of the most outstanding and accomplished trap-shooters of his time and maybe the best wing shot ever. He was a member of the California Indians Trap Shooting Organization and the Shoshone Indian Trap Shooting Organizations for many years. He won numerous local and state trap shooting titles and he was the national doubles trap shooting champion in 1947, winning the title in Vandalia, Ohio.
Buck was a founding member/director of the Visalia Country Club and the Visalia Rotary Club. After successfully completing a surveying course, he became the first city engineer of Exeter. He quite by accident found a knack for sales, which led to his moving back to Visalia to establish and later become Chairman of the Board of an insurance brokerage office. He established his insurance business in 1916. That firm has been known as Buckman-Mitchell, Inc since 1921 and still exists today as one of the foremost insurance brokers in the United States that specializes in agricultural insurance and risk management.
Buck also tried his hand at raising oranges in 1918 in a ten acre orchard near the community of Yettem, located north of Visalia near Ivanhoe.
Buck served as President of the Independent Insurance Agents Association of California in 1932 and was the Chairman of the City of Visalia Centennial Celebration in 1952 as well as Visalia’s first Man of the Year in 1953. Mr. Buckman passed away in 1978, at the age of 89.
Mr. Buckman’s “Faces” profile is sponsored by Wendy and Stanley S. Simpson.