Bernice Paxton was the second child of Charles D. Paxton and Georgia Hammond. She was born on the family farm (Valley View) near Zanesville, Ohio. She graduated from Zanesville High School in 1929 and attended Muskingum College in New Concord for one year to obtain a teaching certificate. Yelptown School (she always said it was named because you could hear the dogs yelp at night), a one room school, was the first school that he taught at. Later on she taught closer to the family farm and had her brother Don in class. For the rest of her life she worried that someone would tell her that she needed to go back to get a four-year degree -- no one ever did.

Left to right : Virginia Paxton, Charles D. Paxton, Bernice Paxton

She married Perry Franklin Butler on June 11, 1940. They first lived in Cincinnati where he worked for the U.S. Department of Commerce. In about a year they moved to Port Clinton, Ohio where he worked for the government at the Erie Ordance Proving Ground. He was drafted in 1943 and my mother and I spent the next two plus years at Grandpa Paxtons house near Zanesville.

After WWII we returned to Port Clinton (my sister Judy was born in 1945) and dad returned to work at Erie Ordance. In 1951 we moved to Parma, Ohio where dad spent about three years in non-government work. Mom began to teach school again on a full-time basis.

In 1957 we moved to Shelby, Ohio where dad worked at the Shelby Air Force Base and mom taught school. They moved quite a bit -- Eau Gallie, FL, Washington, D.C., Indianapolis, and finally back to Melbourne where they both eventually retired.

They had two children:

1. John Charles Butler
   [b. October 31, 1941 ]
   Professor and Associate Dean, University of Houston

2. Judy Joann Butler
   [b. January 25, 1945]
   Teacher, Hong Kong
   

   John and Judy Butler, ca 1949 on the front porch of the John E. Butler farm house with the old barn in the background