Garland Earl Butler Jr., 94, of Locust Hill passed away peacefully on Monday, March 2, 2020.
Bubba, as he was affectionately known, was born in Richmond on September 30, 1925, the son of G.E. Butler and Loulie Elizabeth Milburn Butler. Bubba Butler was predeceased by his beloved wife, Edith Lillie Eacho Butler, in 1989, and by his stepson, Kenneth Lloyd Massie. He is survived by his second stepson, Dennis W. Massie of Gainesville, Va.
As a teenager, Bubba Butler first discovered his love of Middlesex County. At the age of 14, he and his father in 1939 built a small clapboard cottage above the Rappahannock. The cottage and its small farmstead would later become his home.
He attended Richmond’s John Marshall High School and was a member of the Corps of Cadets and the Junior Red Cross. He entered Navy service in February 1944, four days before accelerated wartime-graduation, with assurances that his diploma would await his return home. After training in Illinois, Michigan, and Florida as a cook, Bubba joined the crew of the recently-commissioned destroyer escort “John L. Williamson” for combat service in the Pacific. The ship served on anti-submarine patrols and in the Marshall Islands bombarding Japanese positions and taking aboard enemy prisoners and civilians. The ship in the summer of 1945 twice sailed on patrol duty off Okinawa. Cross trained, Bubba also served on a damage-control party, manning a deck fire-hose point.
Seaman First Class Butler was discharged in June 1946. His high school diploma, however, was never found. Undeterred, he completed an undergraduate degree at Richmond Professional Institute (now VCU) and law school at the University of Richmond. He was soon hired by Reynolds Metals as a project coordinator, later manager, for many years moving about the corporation’s various Richmond offices and production facilities doing, as he would remark with a ready smile, “whatever, whenever, wherever they liked.” He retired in 1980 and devoted his time to his Middlesex home, gardens, and livestock. In 2016 Richmond’s Northside Masonic Lodge recognized his 60 years of membership.
In 1973 Bubba and Edith had built a second home on their riverfront property, adjacent to a gently sloping riverbank pasture. Edith Butler was employed by the Henrico County Police Department and it was not long before the earlier cottage became a frequent vacation destination for numerous law enforcement officers. Bubba and Edith commuted to Richmond daily and spent their weekends working the farmstead, adding a barn and various other outbuildings, and raising horses and goats. Bubba much enjoyed regaling listeners with tales of proudly and with good cheer bringing in each new kid and putting it atop the kitchen table for presentation. The last descendant of the several goat herds was buried with full pastoral honors last year, marking the passing of an era.
To sit at the kitchen table and listen to Bubba was to peer through a window of Middlesex lore. He seemed to know everyone within several decades of his age, shared tales of them all, and passed along the best sources for bales of hay, farm-fresh eggs, dock pilings, fried oysters, and even vehicle inspections. In his last years he was fondly watched over by a host of neighbors along the road, neighbors who gathered around his kitchen table for birthdays, cut his pasture, took on repairs, tended to his chickens and goat, and took him out for groceries, errands, and appointments, trips he so enjoyed for the many folks who enthusiastically chatted with him. Bubba was particularly pleased that his neighbors on their daily walks often brought a tidbit for Sally, the indomitable goat, and Casey, the forever inquisitive hound, both trotting across the yard and field in anticipation. W.E. Moye and Patty Campbell, special friends, looked after their buddy every day.
At Bubba’s request, there will be no memorial service and burial will be private.
