Sam Busselle, 85

Sam Busselle, who had a passion for repurposed wood and built a house for his family on Owen Little Way in Vineyard Haven, died on July 31. He was 85.

Son of architect Alfred Busselle and Martha Knapp Busselle, Sam grew up in Princeton, where he swam his way through the Lawrenceville School, earning a swimming scholarship to Yale. For many summers he worked setting up umbrellas and spreading beach towels for the Vineyard Haven Yacht Club and, of course, swimming.

While earning a master’s degree in architecture from Yale, he learned the practical side of the trade on the small parcel of land where his family summered. He tore down the abandoned ticket office his father had moved from the steamship wharf, moved his grandmother’s leak-prone modular house — known as “the sieve” — and redesigned a chicken coop into a two-bedroom unit. He built a main house, first tearing down an Edgartown barn advertised for demolition and rebuilding its frame on the family property. Boards salvaged from a WWII army barracks became the exterior skin; bartered windows and plate glass and rubble stone from the foundation excavation completed a 35-foot chimney. He did the wiring and the plumbing himself, with classmates and siblings laboring alongside him, sometimes joyfully, sometimes terrified. It was a creative, lifetime project.

Over the decades he shingled, fixed leaks, repaired windows, rebuilt steps and painted trim without complaint, upgrading the house with touches like cranberry-box cabinets and salvaged doors turned into sofas. When he put down his tools, he’d grab his clam rake and head for the Lake Tashmoo clam beds, or carry the mast and sail down to the Owen Little Way beach and launch the Sunfish. Or swim a mile.

In 1968, after several years teaching high school, Sam, with his new wife Rebecca and her seven-year-old son Wynne, moved from Boston to New York, where he merged architecture with education at the General Learning Corporation as the family expanded with the births of Katrina and Max. Sam and Rebecca then spent three years gutting and renovating a derelict SRO on St. Mark’s Place in Manhattan’s East Village before joining the Peace Corps, spending three adventurous years in Bo, Sierra Leone, with their three children. There Sam taught drafting to young men desperate for his skills, designed and built a factory, and constructed a morgue for the Bo hospital, which had never had one — an experience that shaped his worldview and lifelong commitment to service.

When the family returned to the United States in 1975, Sam was lured by a tumbled-down 18th-century farmstead in Millerton, N.Y., its brick fireplace spray-painted red and floorboards buried under linoleum. He and Rebecca bought it for little money, launching another lifelong renovation.

Professionally, he combined his architectural training with a passion for community planning. He spent the bulk of his career as a planner for the State of New York at the Wassaic Developmental Center, working to transition residents from an institution into smaller homes. He also worked for the Eleanor Roosevelt Center, gave much time to criminal justice issues, and co-founded the North East Community Center to bring services to rural Dutchess County. In later years he took up the cause of affordable and workforce housing. His lifelong goal was to bring people together.

He is survived by his wife of 58 years, Rebecca, of Millerton, N.Y., and Vineyard Haven; his son, Wynne Morriss, and wife Suzanne, of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.; his daughter, Katrina Busselle, and husband Ney Marks da Silva, of Cold Spring, N.Y.; his son, Max Busselle, and wife Juliet, of Los Angeles, Calif.; his twin sister, Harriet Barrow, of Vineyard Haven; and sister Polly Bishop, of Brooksville, Me.

He was predeceased by his sister Lucy Myers.

He will be dearly missed by his five grandchildren, Nick, Julia, Olivia, William and Alexandra, and his nieces and nephews, Whit, Steve, Rob, Samantha and Scott.