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Page 9 text:
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Dr. Thomas W. Butcher on this man, and demanded rest, there was no hesitancy, he had no regrets. He felt that he had done all he could in the job he had chosen, and he was ready to quit in deference to passing time. He wrote to the Board of Regents, requesting retirement: “ . . . . Thirty years constitute a goodly time in all things human.” As president emeritus, Thomas Butcher continued to walk through administration building halls, to sit in his office, to teach a class or two. But now he was only an observer, watching the motion of machinery he had built. New students came and few knew him. For vigorous, hardworking Tom Butcher, there was now only the restless waiting. Then, on July 14, 1947, at the age of 80, he died. The academic world paused to note his going, Emporia buried one of its civic leaders, one of the last of a generation which spread wide the name of the town, and the young men went on picking up the frayed ends of their lives — without a good friend.
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Page 8 text:
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Dedication By John I . McCormally When the war ended, the frayed ends of young men’s lives were bound up again; the web was pulled tight and from the ends of the earth youth turned home. Whatever their confusion and uncertainty, they knew somehow that going home — going back to the beginning — would give them their second start at life. So they gravitated back to the places and to the tasks they were at when war came. And they hoped desperately that nothing had changed. The young men who came back to Emporia State found an emptiness. The school was clambering back to its peace-time place among American colleges. The strain of war had gone with the uniforms that had dominated campus life. Laughter, experimentation, hard work and a flair for the future made it seem that indeed one had come home and nothing was changed. But Thomas W. Butcher was no longer president of Emporia State and to the students who had studied under his cautious, stimulating guidance, his absence made the coming home a little less perfect than the dreams had pictured. Yet it was only fitting that, just as young men rested from battle, so too. Thomas Butcher at 76 should choose to rest from a long, full life. Even then, his first request for retirement after 30 years as president, was refused by the Board of Regents which begged him to stay on the job another year. In 1944, he stepped down from a position which had never been a high or important one until he made it so. Young Tom Butcher had frolicked with the young state of Kansas and grew to maturity with it. He went steadily up in the world, from cow-punching to a rural school teaching job. He worked his way to his own college degrees; then settled down to guiding others to similar goals. In 1913, even before the young men’s fathers went to their war, Thomas Butcher became president of Emporia State. During the decades he was here, Emporia State grew into the college recognized today. More than half a dozen buildings were constructed— the administration building, the music hall, the women’s dormitory, the power plant, the student union, the laboratory school and the home economics building now used as a library annex. Today students walk under the elms President Butcher planted. But the real measure of this leader is not to be found in the physical growth of the school under his direction. Rather is he recognized as the influence that guided this school toward recognition as one of the country’s leading teacher-training institutions. Under President Butcher Emporia State grew from little Kansas State Normal to an American college of first rank. Few men are so fortunate as Thomas Butcher in finding the end of their jobs near the end of their years. But as age lowered its weight [ 4 ]
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