He started life in Bradenton. His broadcasting career took him around the world
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Milburn Garland “Gil” Butler, a Bradenton native who went on to a distinguished national and international broadcasting career, died at at home on Oct. 10 in Waldorf, Maryland. He was 85.
In 1978, Butler began a nearly three-decade career at the Voice of America, the United States Information Agency’s international radio network. In 1981, just a year into his first overseas assignment, he covered one of the biggest stories of his career: the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
VOA reported early on that a group of soldiers rushed Sadat during a military parade, hurling grenades and spraying machine gun fire at the reviewing stand, but showed great restraint in reporting his death until the evidence was conclusive.
“There were all kinds of stories going around, one that he had survived, that he had been only slightly wounded, others were reporting that he was dead at the scene. And Voice of America — I think this is illustrative of the care that we took and do take with news coverage — and that is we were not the first to report Anwar Sadat was dead. We were not the last, but we were not the first. We waited until we had confirmation from multiple sources,” Butler was quoted as saying in a VOA story in 2009.
During a nearly three-decade career with VOA, Butler reported on stories in 68 countries, working in Cairo, Beirut, Beijing, and London, as well as covering the State Department and Pentagon during his time at home between foreign assignments, according to his son, Jack Butler.
In his book “Voice of America — A History,” author Alan L. Heil Jr. called Butler “ubiquitous” and said he was “among the first reporters to ride into Kosovo right behind the NATO convoys” on June 12, 1999, during the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Kosovo War.
A year earlier, Butler reported from Moscow that Russia’s parliament was preparing to consider ratification of the Strategic Arms Limitation — or the Start-Two” — Nuclear Disarmament Treaty.
Some of the lawmakers were demanding conditions for ratification that would allow Russia to unilaterally withdraw from the treaty.
Butler was born Dec. 1, 1935, in Bradenton. He attended local schools, where his mother was a teacher, and graduated from Manatee County High School in the early 1950s. He enlisted in the U.S. Army at the end of the Korean War.
After his Army service, Butler graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in radio engineering, and married Judith Bunten.
He began working as a DJ at the WBRD radio station in Bradenton, in the early 1950s, spinning disks at the beginning of rock ‘n’ roll.
“He shifted from flipping stacks of wax to news very early in his career. No good R&R stories, although he collected their LPs,” Jack Butler said.
Gil Butler moved on to larger stations and more challenging positions in radio and television, working for radio stations around the Tampa Bay area.
His first TV job was as a general reporter for WTVT in Tampa. From there, he moved to WXYZ in Detroit, Michigan, before moving to Silver Spring in the Washington D.C., area, where he worked as a White House correspondent for local CBS affiliate WTOP, covering Washington politics under presidents Nixon and Ford.
Gil Butler appears in Timothy Crouse’s book, “The Boys on the Bus,” written about the White House press corps during the Nixon era as one of the six ‘Knights of the Green Ottoman,’ named for an item of furniture in the 1972 White House press complex, where the newsmen would gather and share notes.
In one passage, Crouse described Gil Butler chuckling over a volume of Mencken.
“This description will surprise no one who knew him, as Gil was a voracious reader. He was always in the middle of a massive nonfiction volume about politics, military history or the space race,” Jack Butler said.
Moving from Silver Spring in the late 1970s, Gil and Judi Butler spent many years on a small horse farm in Accokeek.
After Judi began requiring full-time nursing care, Gil sold the farm and moved to Waldorf to be closer to her. When COVID-19 restrictions prevented him from coming in to visit, he would stand outside her window, wave to her, and have what conversation he could with her through the glass. He was, to the end, a devoted, loving and loyal husband, Jack Butler said.
Gil Butler is survived by his wife, Judith Butler; his children, John Butler and his wife Rosa Butler, Peter Butler and his wife Lynn Butler, and his daughter Melinda Butler Walker; his grandchildren, Sylvia Molina, Evan Brettell, Scurvy Walker, Violet Butler, Benjamin Butler, and Charles Butler; and his great-grandchildren, Ethan Butler, Daphne Molina, and Joshua Brettell.
A memorial service will be held at a later date.
This story was originally published October 19, 2021 at 11:53 AM.
