Every Picture Tells A Story

You never know where following a story might lead you.

The picture above was taken in March 1956 in Great Falls, Montana, where Kefauver was campaigning ahead of the state’s primary (a primary he won, for the record). But who was the woman he’s posing with, identified in the note as “Cleo”? And why does the note call them “Two hard-working Senators”?

UT’s notes on the image provided a couple additional clues, identifying her as Cleo Butler and saying she was a candidate for Montana State Senate. Being a hopeless political junkie, my next thought was, “Hmm, I wonder if she won?”

On a lark, I googled “cleo butler montana,” and came across her obituary, which allowed me to learn about the life of this remarkable woman.

First, the bad news: She lost in the Democratic primary for her State Senate race. However, she was a delegate to that year’s Democratic convention. She was the youngest delegate at the convention; she was just 29 when this photo was taken. Her loss didn’t deter her from politics, either; in 1960, she co-chaired Montana’s Citizens for Kennedy chapter.

During World War II, while she was still a teenager, she worked for an explosives manufacturer and for the War Department in New York City. Shortly thereafter, she met her husband, Ellis Butler, and they traveled around the country to support his career in the Navy.

Her real life’s work, however, was nursing. She got a master’s at Montana State, where she was the school’s first clinical specialist in psychiatric nursing. She helped set up the first all-volunteer free-standing hospice in her county. She wrote the standards of care so the hospice could get state accreditation, then volunteered there and served on the board of directors. She also led the establishment of a mental health clinic in southwest Montana that served 12 counties. For over a decade, she traveled the West as a leader on the American Nursing Association’s accreditation board.

She did all this while raising four kids. In her spare time, while her kids where in school, she learned how to fly a freaking plane.

On top of all of that, she was a local historian. She was still doing research and writing letters to the newspaper in Bozeman the year before she died, while battling the complications of the bladder cancer that ultimately took her life.

Cleo Butler passed away in 2001 at the age of 74. Her obituary described her as a “unique force of nature.” If anything, they were understating it.

I am seriously considering renaming this site “Cleo Butler for President.”