By Roger Grosssman
News Now Warsaw
I recently received a great honor, which was also one of my greatest challenges.
The family of Gene Butts asked me to speak at his funeral.
I was completely humbled by trying to summarize the life of a man who lived to be 94 years old and never sat still.
Gene Butts died in an automobile accident on August 12 on State Road 15 at County Road 200 South. It was a very sudden and shocking ending to the life of a sports icon of Warsaw, Kosciusko County and Indiana.
I’d like to share with you the summary in written form. It may be an introduction to of someone you’ve never met, but you’ll wish you had.
I could give you a list of his titles and positions, then follow that with his awards and recognitions, but that would be very cold. Gene Butts was not a cold person.
At the funeral, people stood up and recalled stories that Gene had told them or shared memories they have of him. Some of those stories made us laugh, some made us cry, but all of us nodded our heads in agreement, because they were fitting of the man we were celebrating.
It’s my opinion that the best way to celebrate this man’s life was not to focus on what he did … but the way he went about doing it.
Gene spent his entire career as an educator.
He was a teacher at Silver Lake and Leesburg and also lived long enough to see TWO new Lincoln elementary school buildings be built. He was a coach at Lincoln and ultimately became the athletic director at Warsaw High School.
And while he retired from public education some three decades ago, he never stopped being an educator. He used his experiences to share what he had learned with others, and he did that every day of his life for people from ages 5 to 95.
He was well known as an official in several sports.
For 55 springs and summers in Indiana, he was a high school baseball umpire. He worked eight state baseball finals.
For 17 winters he was an umpire in Florida, which opened the door for him to work some major league baseball spring training games for the Red Sox, Cleveland and the Tigers.
He was the IHSAA Umpire of the Year in 1996, IBCA Umpire of the Year in 2000 and was inducted into the IHSAA Baseball Hall of Fame in 2013.
Gene also was named winner of the Center Circle officials award by the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010. He worked three state basketball finals was an official for the first Girls State Finals in 1976.
But, to stop there would be to miss a major part of the Gene Butts story!
Gene Butts had a basement filled with pictures, memorabilia, baseballs, and all those awards—a fitting cross- section of his life.
One of his gifts was sharing what he loved. He shared sports with me and thousands of others over the years, wanting everyone to see athletics with the same passion and joy that he did.
He was such a good game official because of his knowledge of the rules.
Officials tend to sit around in their free time and share stories of plays that happened in their games and how they handled them. When they were done, they would all look at Gene to see if they’d done it right.
He was always in control of the moment—on the field and off it. He had a way of looking at you—with a smile and gentle eyes—that disarmed even the angriest soul.
He was the personification of leadership. Too often today, at all levels of our society, people spend too much time and energy reminding us that they are the leader and that they are in charge.
Gene Butts never had to remind us of that—we always knew HE was in charge.
And when he did speak, he spoke with a voice that carried weight. It was powerful. It was honest and sincere.
What he said to you, he meant. And you could believe that not only did he believe that what he was saying was right, he was saying it to you because he genuinely thought you needed to hear it and that it would make you better.
Maybe the best example of this was two years ago, when a more than 200-year-old Sycamore tree became the focal point of the entire town. That tree was going to be taken down to make way for a sidewalk — and sidewalks are a good thing, right?
Gene didn’t scream. He didn’t call a press conference. He just shared with people in power the value he saw in that tree. He thought the city should do everything it could to preserve it.
That tree still stands … with a sidewalk around its base.
His impact on our community is undeniable, and the events of August 12 only changed that from the standpoint that we won’t feel his hand on our shoulders anymore. Still, his legacy carries on in each and every one of us who knew him.
That legacy includes financial support through the Gene Butts Memorial Fund through the Kosciusko County Community Foundation. This fund will help Lincoln Elementary students in their athletic pursuits.
And every time someone is helped by that fund, they will hear the story of Gene Butts.
He was proud to say that he was from Warsaw, and Warsaw was blessed with Gene Butts.
