by Mike Schnitzel
³Valley Stream is just a really nice place to live,² said Butcher¹s daughter Betty Ann Cooper. ³She moved out for a short while, but then she came right back. She never really had a desire to live anyplace else.²
Butcher was a woman of many talents, according to her daughter, and she began to exhibit some of those talents later in life. She discovered a love of painting when she moved into Monica Village in Valley Stream in 1995. She worked with oil paint, and her favorite subjects were landscapes and flowers. When she completed a painting, it became a gift for a friend or family member. ³All of her children and great-grandchildren have paintings that she made during her years painting at Monica Village,² Cooper said.
Despite the loss of sight in one eye, Butcher was a voracious reader. Devouring books of all genres, she read almost constantly, according to her daughter. ³I would bring her the large-print books from the library, and I just couldn¹t keep up,² said Cooper. ³She read all the time.²
Butcher was also a woman of letters. Any time she read something in a newspaper that ³rubbed her the wrong way,² her daughter said, she would write a letter about it. ³We used to say she had a poison pen,² said Cooper.
Butcher was born July 8, 1906, in Brooklyn. Marrying John Butcher on Aug. 2, 1925, she moved to Lindenhurst and then Rosedale before settling in Valley Stream. She and her husband spent 60 years together before his death in 1985, and had three children. The first home the couple shared had a kitchen with no running water, and a chemical toilet in a shed in their yard. In the summers, Butcher prepared meals for her family on an oil stove. During the winters, she used a coal stove.
Her first job was as a secretary in the office of the J.D. Price and Company department store, which later became Worth¹s. She made $25 a week. She was also heavily involved with local chapters of the Girl Scouts and Red Cross, where she spent a great deal of her time doing volunteer work in the community.
One of the proudest moments of Butcher¹s life came when she was 83. She passed the GED test and was awarded a high school diploma through Long Island¹s BOCES program. In 1995 she moved from her longtime home on East Avenue to Monica Village, where she lived until about four months ago.
A wake was held July 30 at Moore¹s Funeral Home in Valley Stream. A funeral mass was held the following day at the Lutheran Church of Our Savior on Rockaway Avenue, with burial at Breslau Cemetery in Lindenhurst. In addition to Cooper, Butcher is survived by two sons, Robert Jr. and John, nine grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. ³She enjoyed her grandchildren and great-grandchildren immensely,² said Cooper. ³She always had time for them.²
Mike Russo contributed to this story. Comments about it? MSchnitzel@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 265.
