OBITUARY: Werner Buckold, 92

NEW YORK – Funeral services will be held Friday for Werner Buckold, president of Werner Buckold Associates, who died Tuesday after a brief illness at the age of 92.

Services are set for 10 a.m. Friday at Riverside Memorial Chapel at 180 West 76th Street in New York.

Buckold spent nearly his entire adult life working in the men’s neckwear industry after arriving in the US from his native Germany in 1938. In 1989, he was presented with the Golden Tie Award by the Men’s Dress Furnishings Association’s predecessor organization in recognition of his half-century of dedicated service and passionate commitment to the market he knew so well.

Buckold’s firm most recently concentrated on supplying bags for retail neckwear, but over the course of his career he traveled the country and the world selling neckwear fabrics, representing Italian silk mills and even selling neckwear. He began his professional life as a shipping clerk, and it perhaps was prescient that, during World War II, he returned to Europe to fight for three years in Italy with the Fifth Army.

Jerry Andersen, executive director of the MDFA, noted that Buckold was involved in the organization for nearly 60 years and served on its board for much of that time. “He supported everything we ever did and was always willing to work for the association,” he said. “Even up until last year, I would emails and calls from him with leads to people he had run into who he thought would be potential members for the MDFA.

“He was a good man,” Andersen concluded.

Buckold served as president of the company that bears his name until his demise. Emily Buckold Andelman, his daughter, joined the company in 2004 and will succeed him as president.

He was a longtime resident of Glen Cove, NY, and highly active in Bnai Zion, a charitable organization that supports humanitarian projects in Israel and the US. He served as national president of the group between 1990 and 1994.

In addition to his daughter Emily, he is survived by another daughter, Leslie Schweitzer-Miller; a son-in-law, Robert Miller; a stepson, James Sherr; six grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

He was married to his first wife, Ellen, for 53 years prior to her death. His second wife, Addie Sherr, who passed away in 2004.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations can be made to the Werner Buckold Memorial Fund, c/o Bnai Zion, 136 East 39th Street, New York 10016.