Friday, March 12, 2010
Roanoke mainstay relocates to Botetourt
Caldwell Butler lives at The Glebe.
Priscilla Richardson is columnist The Botetourt View. You can contact her at 981-3430 or via e-mail.
Priscilla Richardson
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While few people were paying attention about two years ago, one of Roanoke's distinguished citizens quietly became one of Botetourt's. Manley Caldwell Butler, who generally used only his middle name so you probably know him as plain Caldwell Butler, now lives with his wife, June, at The Glebe.
"We looked around and my wife decided that we come here," he said. "It was a good decision."
Butler, 84, explains that his wife is "a lot younger" than he. A pianist as well as the mother of their four children, she brought her piano with them to The Glebe.
Butler, a direct descendant from the great Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court John Marshall, also claims Civil War Gen. James A. Walker as a great grandfather. Walker fought through the entire war and survived, then practiced law, became Virginia's lieutenant governor and served in Congress. You can see the legal and political heritage.
First, Butler attended the Roanoke public schools, including Jefferson High, graduating in 1942.
He started his college career at the University of Richmond but because of the war went into the Navy. After officer training, "I came out an ensign, and wound up finishing the war in charge of a crash boat off of Cape Cod." A crash boat, he explained, existed to rescue Navy personnel.
As soon as the war ended, he started back to college in the middle of the summer. "I didn't need to rest up." He earned his degree at the end of the following summer. He went on to law school at the University of Virginia, graduating in 1950.
By then he had met his future wife, a Richmond girl who attended Hollins College. While he was in Richmond, and she was home during the summer, they got better acquainted. They married as soon as he had his law degree. He wouldn't have done it any differently. "It was divine intervention."
Back in Roanoke as a practicing lawyer, Butler made his first ever political race. He ran for city council and lost by 20 votes, but he had gotten what he calls "the disease." He was helping build the Republican party, so when a slot in the General Assembly opened up, he ran for it. "I was one of five Republicans [in the General Assembly] then," he said, "and now they're a majority."
He and Lacey Putney, Botetourt's own delegate, started in the House of Delegates together, but Putney has never left.
Being a representative in Richmond was fun for Butler. "I didn't have to work very hard, only two months a year, every other year." But his friend Congressman Richard Poff decided to retire. That opened up a seat in the House of Representatives, "so I ran for that. We had a strong party by then."
"The first term I was in Congress, we had the privilege of getting rid of Richard Nixon. I was on the judiciary committee. We were the jury on that. I had to vote to impeach. Kind of interesting way to start a Washington career."
The Nixon affair occupied Butler's first term in Congress. After that, he got busy with a major overhaul of the federal bankruptcy law. Despite recent changes the rules he helped create are "pretty much what we have now. It was a great advance. It was interesting, but hard work, it took about four or five years. We got excellent research on it. Got it enacted the last day of one term."
Butler was followed in office by Jim Olin and now Bob Goodlatte. Today Butler's staying retired, enjoying life. In Botetourt, at The Glebe.
