Ellie Buford (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)

She has climbed some of the tallest mountains in Tibet, dressed as a giant apple at Town Meeting, and detonated flamboyant dishes for legendary Harvard dinner parties. She once sang opera holding the spear of a Valkyrie, worked at the vanguard of digital mapping technology, and, one memorable evening, went to dinner on the arm of Pierre Cardin. Ellie Buford, Harvard’s answer to adventure, recounted all this and more on a recent visit from her home in Italy. Animated in spirit and gesture, Buford regaled the Press office with tales of her new life abroad, as well as the many years she spent on West Bare Hill Road.

Life as an expatriate couldn’t agree with her more, Buford said. Living in the “teeny, tiny” village of Cimpello, near Venice, Buford enjoys a view of vineyards capped by the distant Dolomite mountains. A lover of good food and vino rosso, she shares her favorite restaurants and wineries with the group tours she leads through various regions of Italy. Acting as a tour guide isn’t something she ever expected to do, she said, like many of the opportunities that have unfolded in her life. Adventure is always around the corner, according to Buford, even at dinner parties. After all, she said, you never know who you’re going to meet or where it’s going to take you. “I always get to know everyone at dinner parties,” she said.

Buford grew up Ellie Spittler in Schenectady, New York, the daughter of a GE engineer and a homemaker. The family, which also includes her brother, Carl, loved opera and classical music. Buford majored in music in college, and moved to New York to study piano at the Manhattan School of Music after graduating from the Western College for Women (now part of Miami University). “The next thing I know, I’m singing opera,” she said, hands gesturing to illustrate the moment. “I’m holding spears! Wearing costumes!” Putting her performance career on hold for a short while, she married Turner Buford and came to live in Harvard.

“I was the original beach bum,” Buford said, referring to the perhaps not-quite-legal—but extremely well-attended—evening cocktail tradition she established on the beach at Bare Hill Pond. She recalled those years with a particular fondness, remembering the fabulous dinner parties that were then a well-entrenched part of Harvard social life. At one particular party, she said, she met Ed Miller and Kathleen Cushman, publishers of the Harvard Post. They asked her to write recipes for the paper after attending a dinner party hosted by the Bufords themselves. “I liked to make big, flaming things,” she said. Buford now contributes recipes, many with an Italian flair, for the Harvard Press. She was also “very, very active” in the Garden Club for many years, and eventually served as the club’s vice president. While Buford left the stage behind in body, she never left it in spirit. She is well-remembered by many townspeople for appearing at Town Meeting in a large apple costume of her own design to solicit donations for the town’s 250th anniversary. With flies and butterflies quivering from wires attached to her headdress, she walked out of the meeting with $1,000 in a horse bucket borrowed from Frank Carlson. The same suit is still used at the Congregational Church Apple Festival.

After the death of her husband in the late 1970s, however, Buford’s life took a different direction. “All of a sudden, I was a widow,” she said. “But guess what happened to me? New opportunities.”

For a number of years Buford worked as an organizer and fundraiser for state political campaigns, helping Congressman Barney Frank, among others, to victory. It was work she clearly enjoyed, too: “We worked for good causes,” she said. “We had a ball.”

Noting her flair for leadership and adventure, Buford’s friend Pete Cook, an executive at Digital Equipment Corporation, eventually asked her to come to work for him in the company’s public relations department. She started there in 1981, working as an environmental advocate and promoting corporate citizenship for the hardware giant for 13 years. During her tenure, Buford oversaw the company’s success in helping to establish the Nashua River Watershed Association and traveled far and wide surveying—and documenting—some of the most polluted sites on the planet. She also took the photographs for the book Massachusetts Waterways: Environmental Designs for the Future, as a Digital executive on loan to the Dukakis administration.

The traveling Buford did during her Digital years gave her the idea of taking groups abroad to revisit her favorite places, she said. She has taken groups to Russia, Croatia, and throughout her favorite, Italy. Many of her friends and acquaintances from Harvard have joined her on these trips over the years, she added, and she looks forward to leading many more. “But you haven’t heard the latest thing that’s happened to me,” she said, visibly brightening. With the Press office fatigued just listening to this litany of adventure, Buford recounted her latest undertaking: leading American troops in fitness exercises at Aviano Air Force Base. “They call me the ‘Squadron Granny,’ ” she said, noting that she now sports a pair of fatigues from the 724th Air Mobility group emblazoned with “Miss Ell.”

After catching up with Harvard friends, Buford planned to return home to Italy in time to enjoy the summer months, she said. She was looking forward to getting back to training with the troops and enjoying the view of the mountains from her terrace. “I have vineyards in front of my eyes every day,” she said. “Life is good.”