At 100 years old, Ruth Butler often tooled around Atlanta’s West End in her gray Ford Taurus. She was so small she had to sit on pillows to see.
“If I want to go somewhere, I don’t want to wait on anybody to take me,” she used to tell her family, who would chastise her for not “acting her age.”
The feisty centenarian died Dec. 26 while in hospice care.
She was preceded in death by her husband, Haven “Brownie” Butler, also of Atlanta.
An 80-plus-year member of Little Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, Mrs. Butler stayed active. She regularly attended a senior citizens center and remained the pillar of her extended family.
“Mrs. Butler was strong to the end and energetic,” said Melvin Mann, her first cousin and caretaker. “She was a prayer warrior and, of course, with her age, full of wisdom,” he said. When people asked her about her longevity, she was quick to answer: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I try to live by that.”
Raised outside Barnesville, Butler moved to Atlanta as a young adult. She told relatives she arrived on a Sunday and began work Monday in the kitchen at the Georgian Terrace Hotel. Her most memorable moment there was when she served President Dwight Eisenhower.
Her jobs over the years included: nurse at Atlanta Hospital; pencil maker at Scripto; and food services worker at Davidson’s (later Macy’s).
Butler made her own contribution to the civil rights movement. Having worked in various jobs where blacks were given lower wages and menial jobs, she marched and picketed with fellow workers for better pay and benefits such as paid time off and health insurance.
“When I was a child, I cooked and cleaned for white folks while they worked in the factories,” she’d say. “I slept on a cot in the kitchen and was only allowed a day and a half off to go home and see my mama.”
Toiling from sunup to sundown, her pay was 50 cents a week. Her father had died when she was seven, and as the oldest child she had to help make ends meet.
Butler retired from Macy’s after 27 years but didn’t want to sit at home. She worked for the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System 18 years. She finally retired for good at 80.
To keep active, Butler was a regular for 10 years at New Horizons Senior Center in Atlanta.
Tina Sanders-Beale, a pastor, said her grandmother Mrs. Butler “was the introduction to my spiritual walk as a child … She took us early to Sunday school. We were literally some of the first people at the church in the morning.”
Her grandmother would sing in the choir, help in the kitchen and serve as an usher. Whatever needed to be done, she did.
“Church was a large part of her life,” said Beale. “She was very devout.”
She also wanted to make sure all the young people in her life had a solid foundation and was no pushover when it came to manners and “good, old-fashion home training.
“There were just certain things you did and didn’t do,” said Beale. “If we went out anywhere she expected us to be respectable and to use our manners. She used to have a saying, ‘You better show up and act like folk’.”
Butler was honored in November as a role model for active seniors. LeadingAge Georgia and its educational arm, the Georgia Institute on Aging, host the annual awards to raise awareness for quality elder care and to fund year-round educational opportunities for paraprofessionals, professionals and family members who provide elder care.
Butler’s survivors include three stepdaughters: Janis Garlington of Buford, Jeanette Cook and Christine Garlington, both of Atlanta; and a host of nieces, nephews, cousins and step-grandchildren. A wake is set for 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday at Willie A. Watkins West End Chapel, 1003 Ralph David Abernathy Blvd. Funeral services will be 1 p.m. Saturday at Little Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, 315 5th Ave., Decatur. Interment will be immediately following at Lincoln Cemetery, 2275 Joseph E. Boone Blvd.
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