Paul M. Buchanan
Kansas Historical Foundation
Board of Directors
Elected to board: 1993
Elected to executive committee: 2004
President: 2011-2012
Paul Murray Buchanan was born in Osage City on June 9, 1931, to Murray and Pluma (Stavely) Buchanan. He received a bachelor’s degree from Sterling College in 1953. He served two years as sergeant in the U.S. Army counterintelligence corps. He earned a juris doctorate from the University of Kansas in 1958. Buchanan served as a research clerk for the Kansas Supreme Court and district court.
Buchanan married Phyllis Bretches on November 24, 1967.
He practiced law in Topeka and Wichita and served as Sedgwick County assistant counselor. Elected as a Sedgwick County 18th judicial district judge, he served 20 years, more than six as chief judge, before the mandatory retirement. Buchanan was a member of the Kansas Department of Corrections prison overcrowding committee.
He was a member of the Wichita Bar Association, Wichita Bibliophiles, the Wichita State University Library Associates. He was honored by the Kansas Bar Association for practicing law more than 50 years. He received the Distinguished Service Award from Sterling College in 2018.
In retirement he volunteered for the American Red Cross, delivering blood across the state, driving more than 100,000 miles. He built replicas of a reference book stand designed by Thomas Jefferson to present to the justices of the Kansas Supreme Court and Kansas Court of Appeals judges. He was a member of the Wichita Bibliophiles, the Wichita Bar Association, the American Bar Association, the Wichita Petroleum Club, the American Museum of National History. He followed interests in the Santa Fe Trail, Lewis and Clark, Kansas and the West, and was active with his church. Buchanan donated an unfinished oil painting by Alter T. Reid of George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry to the Kansas Museum of History in 2016.
Buchanan was a life member of the Kansas Historical Society. He was elected to the board of directors in 1993 and served as president from 2011-2012. He served as chair of the Edgar Langsdorf Award of Excellence committee. Phyllis served on the Historical Society’s Save Outdoor Sculpture project.
The Honorable Paul Murray Buchanan died in Wichita on April 5, 2023.
