Butch saw that each of us holds the possibility to help others. What a wonderful, powerful realization, that each of us no matter who we are and what we have can help others, and that can change the world.
I am going to tell you the secret as to why everyone cared about Mr. Butch and how it’s related to the fact that we don’t use our blinkers when we drive. We in Boston don’t use our directionals when we change lanes because doing so would mean that we would have to acknowledge that there may be someone behind us that we are somewhat responsible for, where if we just drift into your lane, I can always say that I didn’t see you. It’s the same thing as how we avert our eyes while walking down the street when we see someone who is a different color, or who is handicapped or who is homeless. We do it because it is easier to look through someone than to acknowledge their humanity and realize that they may need our help.
And why we loved Butch was because he was one of those people, one of the others whom we often ignore and he stretched out his hand and said hello and made us laugh and invaded our space in the most nonthreatening, gentlemanly ways. He broke that “third wall” and made us realize that we were sharing the world with him. It is crazy to think that this skinny homeless black man would be so adored, but he was. But it was more than that, wasn’t it?
http://billtmiller.com/mrbutchshow/
Big Up to Bill T Miller for his honorable coverage and documentation of Mr Butch
http://billtmiller.com/mrbutchshow/
He had two things that endeared himself to us, one he was born with and the other he earned. The first is charisma. He had it, he still has it even after he’s dead; look, he has three lovely women, Sue, Toni and Brooke, still working for him. The other thing he had was Social Capital. Do you know what that is? He didn’t have financial capital, that he got from us “paying our taxes” to the mayor. He didn’t have material capital. He had stuff, but not a lot of it. No he dealt in social capital. He had power that was created by his location in a structure of relationships. Everybody knew Butch. He was at the center of a number of value of networks that crossed race and class and education and which all came back to him.
In our culture where we are all so busy, he had time; in our society where we communicate by text messages and cell phones and e-mail, he only had one, himself. He had a way that allowed us to stop and talk one on one, maybe for a moment, maybe for a long time. He would engage people in conversation and that is so rarely done anymore. He would talk to you and that would make you feel special even though you probably weren’t. Butch seemed to like everybody; he was a great equalizer. He stopped us and made us not only recognize his humanity, but also our own that we have often forgotten. I believe that the spark of the divine doesn’t exist in some far-off place, but right here in the space between people and that makes Butch someone who got to experience the divine on a daily basis.
My friend Zach Andrian recently wrote this about Butch, “His was the lost art of living on the outside but letting everyone in. To him went the humility of the streets but never its disgrace. For him that had no home was a home in every heart he met.” Did you know that the Boston Globe has posted this Guest Book for people to sign, and as of this afternoon there were 36 pages filled by about 400 people? The largest number of pages filled previously was for a Harvard professor, and that was only 11 pages long.
Everyone realized that he was special; I just hope he did, too.
We all feel like we own a bit of the legacy of Mr. Butch, and some may complain that this isn’t what he wanted. I know there were times when I was at some party and someone would bring Butch in explaining that he was an alternative street person. It made me uncomfortable; as I’m sure hearing that does for you now. And a part of that comes from my own feelings of ownership of Mr. Butch. I would wonder why he would let himself be some BU student’s pet project. Of course he needed to survive and he also wanted to have a good time and he often acted out of his addictions as well, a combination that made him very human.
We need to remember that he was human, and not to romanticize him to the point that we think that it is normal for people to live off handouts from strangers and sleep on the streets. Most folks on the streets don’t want to be there, and we all know it even if we pretend not to see them. Butch wasn’t an advocate for the homeless, but for himself. We can learn from his life, from how he went about in the world and took the time to see each of us as full worthy and that is something I hope all of us do. This is especially with those who society deems to be “the other” or “the outsider.”
Butch was someone who saw in each person with whom he interacted the possibility that they could help him. But let’s reframe that for a moment. Butch saw that each of us holds the possibility to help others. What a wonderful, powerful realization, that each of us no matter who we are and what we have can help others, and that can change the world.
He was the soul of the old Kenmore Square, and I am sure that the day that the old Citgo sign crumbles, its final word will not be “Rosebud,” but will in fact be “Butch.”
He whom we have loved and lost is not where he was before, but is now everywhere we are.
Closing
“To live in this world you must be able to do three things.
To love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it;
And when the time comes to let it go, To let it go.” — Mary Oliver
The King of Kenmore Square is dead. Long live the King.
The Rev. Hank Peirce of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Medford gave this euology at Mr. Butch’s memorial service Sunday, July 22.
https://www.universalhub.com/2019/when-trolleys-ran-through-kenmore-square-instead
https://apesmaslament.blogspot.com/2007/08/legend-of-mister-butch.html