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| Graduated from Springfield High School in 1962 |
He is the author of 2 books on 401(k) plans, The Decision-Maker’s Guide to 401(k) Plans and 401(k) Today. For over 10 years, Steve has written a weekly financial column for Knight Ridder newspapers. He is the originator of the “Butler Index”, an index of total costs of 401(k) plans that has been featured in articles in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He has also co-produced a retirement investment pilot program, which was aired on National Public Television stations throughout the country.
Steve is q graduate of Harvard College and attended the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Business Administration.
Butler: It was a wonderful life
Chesterfield, N.H., police help out a motorist that slid off the road during a snow storm Monday, Dec. 12, 2016, in Chesterfield, NH. Snow and freezing rain made for messy commutes and closed hundreds of schools Monday as a snowstorm pushed into the Northeast. (Kristopher Radder/The Brattleboro Reformer via AP)
Kristopher Radder/The Brattleboro Reformer via AP When it occurs in the company of a great parent, even a driving mishap in the New England winter can provide a fond childhood memory.
By STEVE BUTLER | sbutler@pensiondynamics.com
December 30, 2016 at 6:00 am
Picture a late-night scene with heavy snow falling and 5 inches already on the ground, with not a car in sight at the single four-way intersection in “downtown” Springfield, Vermont. Dad was giving me, age 15, a ride home from a dinner party, and at the top of a very steep hill leading straight down to the center of town, he said, “Son, let me show you how you drive when it’s slippery out. You pump the brake like this.”
About a third of the way down, pumping the brakes just made us go faster, and as Dad uttered an expletive, we careened off the bank, then bounced against a guard rail and did a 360 at the bottom of the hill. In the process, we tore the entire rear fender off the back of our new Buick station wagon — tail light and all. Hauling ourselves up the hill, hand over hand on the guard rail, we retrieved the fender, threw it in the back and drove home.
It was the only bad advice I ever received from the man who died last week after living six months beyond 100 years of age. He gave me more than I can ever imagine — not so much in specific advice, but in leadership by example — and close friendship. He was smart and practical, loved sports — especially baseball — and had a tremendous sense of humor. He came from an eclectic family background that included some high achievers and some dark sides, as well. Irish immigrant grandparents were on his father’s side and a well-connected Boston family on his mother’s side.
He played one summer for a Red Sox farm team called the Blue Sox, and after what must have been an incredible diving catch, the coach, Sad Sam Jones, who had spent 22 years in Major League Baseball, said, “Butler, was the best catch I have ever seen in all my years in baseball” (or words to that effect, as Dad told it). He rued having once missed seeing Babe Ruth hit a home run in Fenway Park because he was getting a hot dog at the moment.
He gave me boxing lessons until I punched him in the nose, at which time he set the gloves aside and we never touched them again. In winter, we would play ping pong for a nickel a game, and later, we built a grass tennis court in the backyard by packing the soil with a homemade roller made of cement. To our surprise, balls bounced fine, so we built a fence around it with chicken wire and used a cheap volleyball net from Sears — a pure expression of “Yankee ingenuity” — and then we played tennis for a nickel a game.
Dad’s professional life involved sales and sales management. He left Vermont after a 20-year career with a machine tool company in our town and went to work for Caterpillar in the Midwest. Later, he was talked out of retirement by a company in Buffalo, where he worked for about 10 more years. Apart from a general level of competence and self-confidence was a sense of humor that offered a bottomless well of extemporaneous humor. The latter largely defined his relationships with people and made him such a pleasure to be around.
I never heard my father actually tell a joke — nothing that required rote memorization and a punch line, etc. Instead, stuff would just come up. I was pushing him up to dinner in his nursing home about a year ago and we passed a fellow resident wheeling herself the other way — a pretty woman and friend of Dad’s with a beautiful smile. As we passed her, Dad asked, “You just getting in from last night?”
Once, loading him from my car back into his wheelchair after a short trip, he said, pointing to the catheter hose extending back to the floor of the car, “Don’t forget my bag of urine.” On seeing his grandson recently who visited with today’s fashionable short-cropped beard, Dad said, “What happened? Did your razor break?”
More recently, about two weeks ago, he said, “What’s happening to my money? I said, “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ve been taking care of it for fifteen years.” His response: “So who do I have watching you?”
Living to such an old age can be a tremendous struggle both physically and psychologically, but the reward is the gift, both to the parent and the children, of their seeing how everything turns out. Psychologist Joyce Brothers pointed out that we are always trying to please our parents and that this compulsion extends even after the parents have died.
Dad’s seeing how it all turned out, meeting his great grandchildren, and enjoying almost daily visits from me for four years since he arrived here constitutes a fitting bookend to the wonderful life of a terrific father. I could not have asked for more.
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