He moved to Staten Island in 1919 where he served as chairman of the board of L.A. Dreyfus Co. (before that chewing gum company moved to Edison, New Jersey and was subsequently purchased by Wrigley)[4] Buck served as chairman of the Chewing Gum Code Authority from 1934 to 1935[5] and became a member of the New York City Board of Education in 1935. He was vice president of the New York City Board of Education from 1938 until 1942, and president from 1942 until 1944.[6]
On April 5, 1949, months following his retirement from Congress, Buck was shot and seriously wounded by a gunman while crossing the street on Stuyvesant Place outside Staten Island Borough Hall. The assailant, Charles Van Newkirk, was a dismissed Merchant Marine engineer who was disgruntled after Buck, as chairman of a House Education and Labor subcommittee, denied his appeal to regain his position.[8]
^Steinberg, Ted (2010), Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York, New York: Simon & Schuster, pp. 242–58, 320–22, ISBN978-1-476-74124-6