Henry L. Buzzard was born in Normal, Illinois on June 7, 1923. He became deaf at a early age. In 1926, he enrolled at Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis, Missouri. He completed his education there in 1938. He attended a high school in his hometown and graduated in 1942. He attended Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana for one year. In 1943, he also attended Eastern Illinois State College in Charlestown and received a diploma. Buzzard entered the Wabash College again and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry in 1946. Buzzard attended Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts and received a Master of Arts degree in Geography in 1949. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana and received a Master’s in Library Science in 1951.

Buzzard worked as a cartographic aid for the United States Air Force in the Washington, DC area. He was employed as an assistant librarian and cataloguer at Gallaudet College from 1952-1956. He was also a library instructor. He married Juliet Barnett in 1956 and resigned to work as a library cataloguer for the United States Army map service for ten years, until 1966. Buzzard and his family moved to New York City in 1966 where he worked as a school librarian at the New York School for the Deaf in White Plains, New York. He retired in 1979; however, he continued to volunteer as an archivist and historian for the school.

Buzzard was a lay reader for St. Ann’s Church for the Deaf in New York City and also served as a deacon. He was ordained to the Deaconate on September 26, 1996 and was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church on June 28, 1997. He died March 12, 2014.