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.

[caption id="attachment_118940" align="alignright" width="190"] Gene Butts[/caption]

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.

The post In memory of Gene Butts appeared first on News Now Warsaw.

WARSAW — America will celebrate its 250th birthday next year and a local celebration spanning three days is in the works in Kosciusko County.

A group known as the Freedom Fest Committee announced on Wednesday that Kosciusko County will host Freedom Fest, a "once-in-a-generation celebration of America’s 250th birthday," on the weekend of June 5–7.

The event will take place at various locations in Kosciusko County.

Freedom Fest will feature a star-studded headline concert, a regional parade, a veterans and first responders tribute, historic reenactments, vendors, car, truck and tractor shows, as well as a focus on Kosciusko County Agriculture, Orthopedics, and other industries.

There will be family-friendly activities, along with faith and heritage gatherings.

"This is more than a concert or a parade — it's a county-wide and beyond act of gratitude and celebration," said Mike Loher, of the Freedom Fest Committee.

"We’re bringing all Americans together to honor our nation’s founding, its defenders, and the freedoms that define our way of life," he added.

The committee will oversee all logistics, organization, and fundraising, with local businesses, service organizations, and civic groups already pledging support.

To learn more and get involved in sponsorships, contact Loher at Mike@seven25events.com.

The post Committee planning numerous events to celebrate America’s 250th birthday appeared first on News Now Warsaw.

I want to introduce you to someone today.

You will never meet her, because she died last week. Her obituary says she died unexpectedly at the age of 66.

If you have appreciated my work on the radio at any point over the last 33 years at all, she deserves about as much credit as any human being outside of my family for making it happen.

Her name was Nancy Miller.

She grew up in Rochester and graduated from there. She got her teaching degree at Butler.

If her name rings a bell, it might be because she was a teacher for three years at Warsaw Community High School in the early 1980s.

Then she did a really odd thing: she took an English teaching job at Argos High School.
That’s my Argos.

Not too many teachers go from a school of that size to a school that small. It generally means a pay cut, and no one goes looking for that.

She directed a few musicals there, but most of her impact on students was as an English and literature teacher.

She was my English teacher.

She loved sports.

In her first day in our class, she made it quite clear that the Purdue Boilermakers and the Chicago Cubs were the loves of her sports life.

We were going to get along just fine, and we did.

She knew all about my dream of being on the radio.

So, in the middle of my senior year, when all of my friends were taking days off from school to visit colleges and make their final decisions on where they were going, I stayed home because “I couldn’t miss practice.” I look back on it and wish I had that to do over again.

I applied to several schools, but Butler was the one I really wanted. They had two radio stations on campus that were student-operated. One had a signal that barely covered campus, and the other was almost as powerful as WRSW.

It gave a kid like me, who had never been on the radio before, a chance to make mistakes and work stuff out without worrying about making a fool of myself.

But the leadership of the Radio/TV Department at Butler was not convinced.

They didn’t believe I had what it took to make it in radio, and I totally understood where they were coming from.

My voice was very high-pitched and squeaky, and that was in a time when that kind of voice didn’t make it anywhere in that business.

They politely rejected my request to join them.

Mrs. Miller got involved.

She got on the phone and made a phone call. I don’t know who exactly she talked to or what was said, and I can only imagine the tone of the caller—gentle but convincing.
All I know of what happened is this: I got a second letter. This one said that there was, in fact, a space available in the program for me.

And so I went to Butler for orientation week, having never even been on campus before. I had to ask for directions to Ross Hall.

I had no idea what I was doing.

But 39 years later, here I am.

She heard me broadcast games and each morning on the radio. She knew that her investment in me had paid off.

She knew.

As a matter of fact, the last time I saw her face-to-face was on the station’s Cubs bus trip. She didn’t tell me she was going. She even had her husband sign her up to maintain the surprise. I had no idea until she got on the bus.

Is there someone in your life that you can invest in?

Is there someone near you that could benefit from just an encouraging word?

Is there someone you know who needs to know that someone outside of their family believes in them?

I am willing to bet that there is, and in the time it took for Nancy Miller to make that phone call for me, you could change someone’s life the way she did mine.

And by helping that person and changing the course of their lives, think of all the people who will also be affected by it for generations to come.

They laid Nancy Jo Miller to rest today. May her spirit live on in me and others like me that she helped.

The post A tribute to Mrs. Miller appeared first on News Now Warsaw.