DAWN ANNETTE TAYLOR BUIE

Born in 1949 in Long Beach, California, Dawn Annette (Taylor) Buie was a conscientious child, the ultimate good girl who always strove to please her parents and do the right thing. She has always been very creative and artistic with a great sense of humor, an infectious laugh, and a skill for talking. During high school, Dawn discovered that she had a talent for art and decided to pursue an art major at California State University - Long Beach.

Dawn greatly enjoyed her college years studying art and forming friendships, though the competition at the Art Department was intense. After graduation, she had hoped to study graphic design, but finances were tight and she ended up going back to college to obtain her teaching credential. Over the next many years, Dawn was an elementary school teacher at various schools in Orange County, California, including Hawaiian Gardens, Pat Nixon, Travis Ranch, and Canyon Rim, as well as Esperanza High School. As always, Dawn’s favorite part of the job was anything that allowed her to be creative and to help her students tap into their own creativity and self-expression.

In 1978, Dawn married her husband Charles “Larry” Buie who would also become a schoolteacher as well as an avid carpenter / home improvement specialist who ran his own small business on the side for decades. Although very different personalities, the two were a good balance for each other and built a loving partnership and home. Together, Dawn & Larry raised their two children Kristen and Greg in Yorba Linda, CA. Dawn finally retired in 2008 after a late-stage ovarian cancer diagnosis. Following multiple surgeries and chemotherapy treatments, she defied the odds and survived. Not long after, she and Larry then moved to Riverside, CA to be closer to their new grandchildren Cade and London. They enjoyed many adventures together, caring for their grandchildren, traveling the country in their RV, and taking both domestic and international trips, including trips to Europe and Japan. Today, Dawn continues to enjoy spending time with her children and now 4 grandchildren (with grandsons Samuel & Dilan joining the family through an international adoption from Colombia in 2022) and is always busy planning her next adventure.

The poem “The Bridge Builder” by Will Allen Dromgoole has always been one of her favorites and is a fitting commentary on the impact of her life as a wife, mother, grandmother, and teacher:

An old man, going a lone highway,
Came at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast and deep and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.
The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fears for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim near,
"You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again must pass this way;
You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide --
Why build you this bridge at the eventide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head:
"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,
"There followeth after me today
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pit-fall be,
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building the bridge for him."