Michael Butler’s Blog

When the A380 appeared I could not help realizing that things have really changed since I have been around. Thus I show a picture of Dad’s really hot plane from the past.
It all goes back to horses, and I don’t refer to polo ponies, Dad entered WW1 as a Captain in the US Cavalry. Planes entered the picture and the first use was for reconnaissance so naturally they turned to the Cavalry to use them. Dad became an early pilot. What stories he could tell about the frailty of the planes of those early days. So be it, but he was hooked.
Addicted to flying but his planes were a very costly sport. That expense on top of polo had his Dad (Gramps to me) really going through the roof. He wanted Dad to concentrate on our core businesses paper, ranching and real estate.
Thus came into being Butler Aviation. It started at Chicago Midway and by the time Dad and Gen. Stockton were finished it was across the country. BA was basically a service station for general aviation. At that time, and probably more so today, private aircraft were seven times the commercial planes in the air. We had several planes and they made sense in our being able to bust the airline schedules to get to paper mills who were in out-of-the-way places.
We had 13 polo fields at Oak Brook, Dad had 2 joined end to end which gave us our own airstrip, North to South. Then he had two laid out East to West. There were even night lights on the N&S grounds. It was great for the polo players who lived out of town. Many flew in to play for the games when we held the US Open.
When I was in politics it was a real time saver to go from our airstrip at Oak Brook directly to the state capital in Springfield. However the maximum trip came when Dad said come with me to NYC. We flew out of Oak Brook, landed at Butler Aviation La Guardia and got a helicopter which flew us to the top of the PAA building. We went below of few floors to attend a meeting and afterwards flew back the same way we came.

That’s me on top.

Michael