Florence Louise Palmer, born 29-Oct-1925
Photo: Florence Louise Palmer at age 9
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My late mom, Florence Butler, was born Florence Louise Palmer on 29-Oct-1925 on a farm in Wales, Maine, near Sabattus Pond, just east of Lewiston. Mom was a stand-out berry picker from an early age. More photos: Childhood
Artist
photo:
Florence Palmer with her Winter Carnival Year Two ice sculpture of a dog sled team
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She was a bit of an artist. As an undergraduate at the University of Maine in Orono in the 1940s she designed and executed prize-winning ice sculptures in two successive years. In the 1960s she selected illustrations for a book of poetry published by her friend and neighbor, Valerie Worth (Bahlke). She built several wooden silk-screen printing presses, which she used mainly for annual Christmas card productions featuring her artwork. More photos: Winter Carnival Year One and Year Two at the University of Maine
Bride, Gardener, Homemaker, Seamstress
photo:
John and Flo with daisies
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John and Flo were married in June of 1949 at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Northampton, Massachusetts. Miss Barbara Butler, sister of the groom, was the bride's only attendant, and Mr. William King, a classmate of the groom, was best man. Mrs. Butler was graduated from the University of Maine in 1947 and received a master's degree from Smith College the week before the wedding. The groom, a graduate of Towle High School in 1944, served two and one half years with the Army Engineers, attended the Loomis School and was graduated from Amherst College the day before the wedding. More photos from John and Flo's Wedding in 1949: here and here.
photo:
David as the Statue of Liberty, Peter and Maggie Megaw as firecrackers, Halloween, 1960
Flo created this costume for David. Her creation for the previous Halloween was a pumpkin fashioned from chicken wire, with strips of orange crepe paper stuffed into the holes, and a green cardboard stem with eye-holes. It didn't hold up very well in the rain.
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From 1959 to 1961, we lived in a rented farmhouse in Williamstown, in northwestern Massachusetts, in the foothills of Mount Greylock. Flo and David found orchids and jack-in-the-pulpit growing in the woods behind the house. She kept a vegetable garden, and made pear and plum preserves from the again fruit trees nearby. She tapped the few sugar maples in our front yard, and boiled down the sap over an outdoor wood fire in a small vat, maybe two by three feet, which she fashioned from sheet aluminum. Story and more photos: Williamstown, Massachusetts
Jack of All Trades
photo:
Flo in the living room. An accomplished carpenter and seamstress, she made clothing and furniture for our family, including the floor lamp, couches, and footstool in the photo. Photo from article printed in the Wichita Eagle and Beacon in 1968
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Flo made clothes for her husband, John Francis Butler, her three children, and her grandchildren. She built and upholstered couches and beds. When the occasion called for it she was an auto mechanic, plumber, and electrician. More photos: Wichita, Kansas, 1966-1970
Research Chemist
photo:
Flo in her home laboratory in Franklin, Tennessee, 1970s
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Flo earned a master's degree in chemistry from Smith College. She worked as a chemist at Technic Inc. in Cranston, Rhode Island around 1950, and again in the mid-1950s. Around 1960, she began working remotely for Technic, doing library research. A couple of years later, she built a laboratory in her basement and began to develop metal plating solutions. She built labs in her next three homes before returning to Cranston in the 1980s. Most of her work involved precious metal plating solutions, primarily gold. She continued working for Technic until she retired as a vice president in the mid-1990s around age 70, by which time she had been listed as an Inventor on more than a dozen patents. More photos from her home in Franklin, Tennessee
Excerpt from a 1984 article from the Providence Journal: Florence Butler of Smithfield has been appointed vice president at Technic Inc., Cranston, responsible for overseeing research on non-precious metal plating solutions. She joined the company as a research consultant in 1961 [actually around 1950] and a research chemist in 1980. She is a member of the American Chemical Society and Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society.
Builder
Photo: Florence Butler's swimming pool under construction in Wallingford, PA
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Flo's most impressive accomplishments, perhaps, were as a builder. She owned an extensive array of tools, including a table saw and jigsaw. The photo above shows a construction crew pouring concrete into the first of three in-ground swimming pools that she built. Flo and family built wooden forms and a reinforcement bar lattice for each of the pools, engaging outside help only for the initial dig and the pouring and forming of the concrete.
In Wallingford, she transformed a three-foot crawl-space under the house foundation into a full-height basement with concrete walls and floor in order to install a home laboratory. Highlights of this project included several days of hammering at a shelf of rock with a rented jackhammer, and a few tense moments when she knocked out the stone support under the center of the house to replace it with an 8-foot metal pillar. More photos from our Wallingford, Pennsylvania, home.
Excerpts from a 1991 article in the Providence Journal: Florence Butler is 'on her second cement mixer,' her husband says proudly ... Page 1 photo: HE GOES WITH THE FLO(W): Husband John Butler, left, "grew up i a family where all of the males were helpless and proud of it." Page 2 photo: HANDY MA'AM: Florence Butler lays stones for a deck around a pool which she framed, painted and tiled herself.
Excerpt from the Smith College Spring 1992 alumni news: Florence Butler '48: Master of Many Trades She has built many swimming pools, including a just-completed 75-foot-long one in her home of Smithfield, Rhode Island.
Naturalist
photo:
Flo and John paddling inflatable canoe
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A lifelong amateur birder and naturalist, Flo instilled a love of nature in her husband and children, and one daughter, Robin, went on to become a Wildlife Biologist. More of John and Flo's 1990s Photos here.
photo:
John's Greetings letter of 14-Dec-1997
written about nine months before he died at the age of 71
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John's letter of 14-Dec-1997 mentions Flo's weekly volunteer carpentry work at a nearby office of the Audubon Society. John and Flo were stewards for The Nature Conservancy's Ell Pond Preserve, and Flo also did a lot of carpentry work for the Conservancy.
Excerpt from a 1998 article in the Senior Times about Flo's volunteer work for The Nature Conservancy: Heavy construction isn't typically considered to be "woman's work," especially not if the woman is 72 years old. But Flo Butler certainly isn't typical.
Excerpt from a 2001 article in The Observer: RETIRED RESEARCH CHEMIST Flo Butler has been working as a volunteer for The Nature Conservancy, helping them catalog Smithfield's dragonfly population. Though she catches most of her flies at ponds and streams, she also catches some here, near the swimming pool in her yard.
2023
photo:
Flo digging snow
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Mom slowed a bit in her 98th year, but still found the energy to pick vegetables in the garden and shovel snow off her deck when it began to limit the range of her walker. More photos from the Spring of 2023.
photo:
pea-picking Flo in August 2023
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The End
photo:
Robin(?) and Flo holding hands on the day Flo died
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Flo was 98 when she died 30-Dec-2023. More photos from Jul-Dec 2023.
photo:
snowfall outside Flo's bedroom window on the day she died
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