Butler Heritage is Community Heritage

It was one of the largest crowds at a Butler Heritage Foundation dinner that graced the Thornwell Elementary cafeteria on Thursday evening.

This was a continuation of the week long Butler Heritage Foundation celebration that takes place the last days of June and first days of July every year. This is a celebration of the Butler High School impact on all who attended and the community of which the school was a major part. Butler was the all-Black high school in Hartsville until integration closed the doors back in the late 1970s. The Butler Heritage Foundation has a mission to keep those memories alive to remind everyone of the enormous contributions of the school to the life of Hartsville. There is a new community center under construction on the Butler campus and a secondary reason for the celebrations is to continue the important job of fund raising to make this project a reality for the community. The Byerly Foundation has contributed more than $350 for the reconstruction of the community center where the administration building used to be. Currently, the Boys and Girls Club is housed in the Gym wing of this school.

The Butler High Heritage Glee Club opened the dinner on Thursday night and that is the video that is part of this post.

Rufus Bess, an educator in Minnesota and graduate of Butler High, was the evening's keynote speaker. He spoke of the importance of recognizing and seizing opportunities and the foundation he was given at Butler that helped him to a nine-year National Football League career and so far 17 years of teaching students at the high school level.

The heritage that was on display in the faces of those in the audience is the foundation on which community is built. In a city like Hartsville, this type of heritage is one of our major strengths as it shows the SENSE OF PLACE of people for their home community. The sense of pride in Butler and in Hartsville was evidence in the remarks of all who spoke.