Died on 28 February 2009 in Grass Valley, California

Obituary:

Colleen Yvonne (Lawrence) Buckner died in Grass Valley on Feb. 28 of metastic melanoma. She was 66.

A private memorial service was held on March 2.

Colleen was born on Sept. 8, 1942 in Marysville. She was raised in Marysville with two sisters and one brother. She graduated from Marysville High School in 1960 and moved to Sacramento, where she met the love of her life, Richard C. "Dick" Buckner. Colleen and Dick married on April 23, 1961.

Colleen was a very deicated wife, mother, and grandmother, and she is dearly missed by her family.

Colleen enjoyed a career working in the Gridley Unified School District before she and Dick opened an accounting practice in Colusa. When she retired from accounting, she dedicated her life to facilitating adoption search and reunions, reuniting birth parents with their relinguished children and adopted persons with their siblings and biological parents.

She served on the Board of PACER (The Post Adoption Center for Education and Research) and also as the state representative for the American Adoption Congress.

She is survived by her husband, Dick Buckner; son and daughter-in-law, Richard C. Buckner, Jr. and Jill Draper; daughter, Carrie Leigh Buckner, and granddaughter, Simone Buckner.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in Colleen's memory to the Melanoma Research Foundation.

Arrangements are under the direction of Chapel of the Angels Mortuary in Grass Valley.