Editing Frederick Buechner (section)

===Education and military service===
[[File:Edith Memorial Chapel, Lawrenceville School (Lawrenceville, NJ).JPG|thumb|Edith Memorial Chapel at [[Lawrenceville School]], where Buechner attended high school]]
Buechner then attended the [[Lawrenceville School]] in [[Lawrenceville, New Jersey]], graduating in 1943. While at Lawrenceville, he met the future [[Pulitzer Prize]] winning poet [[James Merrill]]; their friendship and rivalry inspired the literary ambitions of both.<ref>[https://archon.wheaton.edu/index.php?p=collections/findingaid&id=6&q=&rootcontentid=67693#id67693 The Wheaton Archives] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200420140319/https://archives.wheaton.edu/#id67693 |date=April 20, 2020 }}. Retrieved on December 17, 2018.</ref> As [[Mel Gussow]] wrote in Merrill's 1995 obituary: "their friendly competition was an impetus for each becoming a writer."<ref>Gussow, Mel (February 7, 1995). [https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/07/obituaries/james-merrill-is-dead-at-68-elegant-poet-of-love-and-loss.html "James Merrill Is Dead at 68; Elegant Poet of Love and Loss."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180629102836/https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/07/obituaries/james-merrill-is-dead-at-68-elegant-poet-of-love-and-loss.html |date=June 29, 2018 }} ''The New York Times''. Retrieved December 17, 2018</ref> Buechner then enrolled at [[Princeton University]]. His college career was interrupted by—in Buechner's words—"two years of very undistinguished service" (1944–46) in the [[United States Army|Army]] during [[World War II]], "all of it at several different places in the [[United States]]," including a post as "chief of the statistical section in [[Fort Pickett|Camp Pickett]], [[Virginia]]."<ref>Buechner, Frederick (2017). ''The Remarkable Ordinary: How to Stop, Look and Listen to Life''. Zondervan. p.79. {{ISBN|9780310351900}}</ref> After the war, he returned to Princeton and graduated with an A.B. in English in 1948 after completing a 77-page senior thesis titled "Notes of the Function of [[Metaphor]] in English Poetry."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Buechner|first=Frederick|date=1948|title=Notes of the Function of Metaphor in English Poetry|url=http://dataspace.princeton.edu/jspui/handle/88435/dsp01h415pb99s|journal=|access-date=June 24, 2020|archive-date=June 28, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200628200435/https://dataspace.princeton.edu/jspui/handle/88435/dsp01h415pb99s|url-status=live}}</ref> However, as an alumnus, he remained identified as a member of his original Class of 1947. Regarding his time at [[Princeton Theological Seminary|Princeton]], Buechner commented in an interview:

{{blockquote|I really knew two Princetons. The first one was during the war, when everybody was being drafted or enlisting. It was just one drunken farewell party after another. Nobody did any work. I didn't learn anything at all. I was in the Army for two years. When I came back, I was so delighted to be free again that I buckled down and learned a few things.<ref>Reidy, Maurice Timothy (November 14, 2012). [https://paw.princeton.edu/article/%E2%80%98pay-attention-your-life Pay Attention to Your Life] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200420140312/https://paw.princeton.edu/article/%E2%80%98pay-attention-your-life |date=April 20, 2020 }}. Retrieved December 17, 2018</ref>}}