Perry Franklin Butler
[born on June 11, 1911 near Zanesville, Ohio
died 1990]
Perry Butler was the first child of John E. Butler and Mertie Mae Rayhill. My grandma referred to him as the "all county boy" -- Perry, Franklin, and Butler. He graduated from Zanesville High School in 1929 and attended Fort Wayne Business School in Indiana for two years. He moved to Washington, D.C. to work for the Department of Commerce. While they were diging the basement of a new building, a sack of old coins was found and each employee was allowed to have a few. I still have one (from the 1850s) in my possession.
He married Bernice Delia Irene Paxton on June 11, 1940. They first lived in Cincinnati where he worked for the U.S. Department of Commerce. In about a year they moved to Port Clinton, Ohio where he worked for the government at the Erie Ordance Proving Ground. He was drafted in 1943 and my mother and I spent the next two plus years at Grandpa Paxtons house near Zanesville. I have several letters that he wrote me from Australia. These are filled with his drawings of some of the things he saw while taking a train from Melbourne to Perth in 1943-44.
After WWII we returned to Port Clinton (my sister Judy was born in 1945) and dad returned to work at Erie Ordance. In 1951 we moved to Parma, Ohio where dad spent about three years in non-government work - including a stint helping to manage a Sonoco gas station.
In 1957 we moved to Shelby, Ohio where dad worked at the Shelby Air Force Base and mom taught school. They moved quite a bit -- Eau Gallie, FL, Washington, D.C., Indianapolis, and finally back to Melbourne where they both eventually retired. Dad spent a few years working at the Melbourne Country Club - to play golf and to get his social security quarters up to the minimum of 40.
They had two children:
- John Charles Butler
[b. October 31, 1941 ]
Professor and Associate Dean, University of Houston
- Judy Joann Butler
[b. January 25, 1945]
Teacher, Hong Kong
