November 17, 1943

68 years ago a young girl boarded a war time train filled with troops in Pueblo, Colorado and rode to Seattle, Washington to meet her own special soldier.  Because Lou was only 20 and Leona was still 17, she carried with her letters of permission from both of their mothers, just in case they got married before they reached the legal age.  

A few days after Leona's arrival in Seattle - and 3 days after her 18th birthday so she didn't have to use her letter of permission, they were married and began their long and happy life together. 

Leona - Lou
November 17, 1943

Happy Anniversary! 

You can read Lou's account of the wedding here 

and Leona's side of the story here. 

Military Service Remembered

Radio School Graduate - 1st tour of duty
2 August 1943

Leaving the family behind - 2nd tour of duty
18 August 1950

For the years you served 

and the sacrifices you made

- a Veteran's Day thank you.

To read about Lou's military service,  click the military service

link in the labels column to the right

61 years ago . . .

. . . these pictures were sent to a serviceman daddy in Alaska.

Don  -  Tom

Jim - Lou, Jr.

Bicycle built for two
Don - Tom

Lou - Jim - Tom - Don

Those cute boys (and their brave mother) survived the separation,

but they were sure happy to see their daddy come home again.

Birthday flashback

We have some great photos of Mom's in younger years, especially during the time that Dad was in Adak during World War II in 1944 and 1945.  She regularly wrote to him and sent lots of snapshots.  The comments below this pictures are her words as written on the back of the pictures.

So in honor of her birthday - enjoy!

This is sure good of Eldon
Leona - Eldon - Charlotte

 

  _____ says this suit is the cutest thing I've got.  

I'm saving it for you.

This was my birthday spanking.

Pinky wants you to know she really gave it to me after the picture was taken.

Celebrating another great year - 
Happy Birthday!

Missing Daddy

[When I left for Adak again,] Leona sent me many pictures of the boys and the things that they were doing that I was missing out on. Many pictures showed them around an inflatable swimming pool or holding baseball gear. Little did I realize that we had the beginnings of a baseball team and swimmers.

Play ball!
Jim - Tom - Don - Lou, Jr.

Uncle Delbert supervising pool time

What a line up
Lou, Jr. - Jim - Steve (cousin) - Tom - Don

We miss you, Daddy
Lou, Jr. - Jim - Tom - Don

I left my heart in Pueblo, Colorado

Butler Family
Tom - Leona - Lou, Jr. - Jim - Lou, Sr. - Don
August 18, 1950

We took the trailer and returned to 1808 E. 5^th Street. It was very sad to leave my wife and small children and go back into the service. Leona really wasn’t up to taking care of those four little boys (Lou, 3 ½, Jim, 2 ½, and Tom and Don, 1) by herself. We fixed a few things on the house and got Leona and the boys set up to live there while I was gone. She could be on her own, but close to my folks and with her folks not too far away.

Leona, 24 years - Lou, 27 years
Lou, Jr., 3 1/2 - Jim, 2 1/2 - Twins, Don and Tom, 1 year

Neither one of them looks very happy about the impending separation.

The night before he was to report to the Induction Center, Leona traveled to Denver with Lou. These pictures were taken outside the motel where they stayed.

She may have been sad, but still stylish. Check out her classy dress and shoes!

At the end of February, 1951 I was discharged and sent home. I received an honorable "hardship" discharge, thanks to Leona's efforts!

[Empty] envelope from Official Discharge Records
2-26-51

Anchors Aweigh . . . again

Ready to report to the Induction Center
20 August 1950

After being discharged from the Navy in December 1948, Dad expected (hoped?) that his military service was complete. However, with the outbreak of the Korean War on June 25, 1950, his hopes were crushed when he was called back to active duty.

We lived in one of my parents’ houses during this quarter [Spring 1950] and then went back to Greeley for the summer sessions when school was out. We took their trailer house up to Greeley and rented space between the football field and the baseball field. During the summer sessions, the college rented trailer space and there were many teachers from all over who came with their trailers just for the summer. We had a good time with them as most of the classes were in the morning and they were all around in the afternoon.

The summer session was going well until we went back to Pueblo for the 4^th of July break, and I received a telegram from the Navy. I was in the Naval Reserve for the money to help get through school. The telegram said that with the Korean War in progress I was needed to return to Adak immediately and not to bother asking for a deferment because my orders were being drawn up and would be delivered very soon. I was going back on active duty as a communications Technician 1st Class and was told to make plans to depart within the next few weeks. We went back to Greeley, and I reported to the school administration with my telegram and dropped out of school. The administrators were very sympathetic, and since I had just taken mid-term tests before the 4th, I received full credit for the summer based on my mid-term grades.

Orders to Active Duty
27 July 1950

I received my orders to report to Denver on August 20, 1950 where I would be given my uniforms and sent to Seattle, and then would be sent to Adak for service, back to the same radio station I had spent 19 months at during World War II.

Check In Slip
23 September 1950

However, it was certainly not the same station I had left. When I arrived in Adak, though, all of the old Quonset huts we had lived in were gone and there were new barracks in use. Our old radio station was several Quonset huts put together with radio rooms, transcribing rooms, transmitting rooms and offices. Now it was one large building with all tiled floors, shining brightly in contrast to the sheets of plywood which we had for floors when I was there before. There were very few sailors on the station until 300 of us Naval Reservists arrived, outranking the 30 some men there, as most of them were seamen or 3^rd class. It didn’t help morale much to find out that they had called us up to active duty only to find out that they did not need us at this station and really didn’t want us.

It was very sad to leave my wife and small children and go back into the service.

This simple statement sums up the harsh reality of this Navy assignment, for this time Dad was leaving a wife and four very young sons. We'll reflect on that in a future post.

A mother of sons

These pictures were taken in November, 1950. Lou, Sr had been called back into active duty because of the Korean War. When early discharge looked doubtful, Leona had these pictures taken and sent to Lou who was back in Adak. Fortunately, she was able to make a case for a "hardship" discharge, and Lou returned home in February, 1951.

Eleanor Leona Carpenter Butler
25 years old

Louis Edward, Jr.
4 years

James Alan
3 years

Charles Thomas
17 months

Donald Eldon
17 months

There is a quiet place in heaven for a mother of boys

Happy Mother's Day!

Eldon in World War II

Eldon's mother, Mable, recorded the following from Eldon in the last pages of his baby book:

"Extra! Extra! December 7, 1940 - Mother, do you know what this means. Louis and maybe Charles will have to go to war!"

Eldon - October 11, 1945
waiting to board the bus to the induction center

Eldon received his orders to report for the draft on 11 October 1945 by going to Denver on a bus to the Induction Center. We all knew that his heart condition would never permit him to be drafted, but he had to go and be examined by the doctors at the Induction Center. As we all knew, he was declared to be 4/F and was rejected as a candidate for the Army.

Selective Service - Certificate of Fitness

Charlotte - Charles ---------------------------- Eldon - Catherine Miller
This picture appears to have been taken when Chuck was home on leave.

Eldon and Charlotte were in the same grade in school. She later married Eldon's older brother, Charles. He was a good friend with Charlotte and Leona while his brothers, Louis and Charles - their fiances/husbands were away during World War II.

Does that make sense? Brothers - Louis and Charles Butler married sisters - Leona and Charlotte Carpenter.

Honorable Discharge

On December 14, 1945 I received my Radioman 1st Class Technician rating. Technician does not mean the ability to work on radios, but that I had special duties as a radioman.


I also received my discharge on this day at the Separation Center in Shoemaker, California. They tried to talk us into joining the Naval Reserve, but I wanted no part of it at that time. Since I signed up later, I would have been ahead to have joined then. I left California and headed for home by train on 15 December 1945.

Award received for service from 7 December 1941 to 2 September 1945

Picture this . . .

Louis Butler in Adak - 1944

Check out that hair!
One of the first pictures he sent home to Leona.

He really was just a kid -
21 years old when this picture was taken

Winters are cold in Adak!

Do you think he knows how to use that?

Cleaning duty

Looking a little more grown up. . .

We all love a man in uniform -
especially this one!

War-time Wedding -- Part 2

After reading what Dad had written about their wedding, Mom filled in with a lot more details. Her memories add another perspective and give us "the rest of the story."

The way Lou used to tell this story [of our decision to get married] was that he didn’t have anything else to write about [in his letters] so he said, “If you could get up here – we’d get married!” Hell and high water couldn’t have kept me from getting “up there.” Lou’s parents wanted us to wait until after the war to get married, and his mother said, “You can’t marry my son.” That did it – I went home and started packing. I didn’t even shop; I just took what I had. Even my wedding dress, although special, was not new.

It must have been very hard for my mother to put me on that train. It was a few days before my 18th birthday. She would have been more concerned if she’d known I didn’t even have a seat on the train. It was full of mostly military men, and I sat on my suitcase. After we got out of the station an Army Lieutenant gave me his seat. I don’t know where he went for the rest of the trip, but I was truly grateful for that seat.

In Seattle there were two train stations – one on either side of the street, across from each other. My train went in one station, and Lou was waiting across the street in the other station! He finally came across the street and found me. I was beginning to wonder if he had stood me up!

We thought we would be getting married in the Bishop’s office, but Sylvia Koons found out we were getting married and had the wedding in her home. They invited several couples, made us a cake, and gave us a present. It was a lovely wedding. The tall sailor in the wedding picture is Chet Fields. He was Lou’s best man. He was Lou’s closest friend when they were serving on Bainbridge Island. I guess Sylvia was the matron of honor.

We found a room in the Enyert’s home after about a month in the hotel. Mrs. Enyert was firm and a little bit bossy, but very kind to us. I was just a young kid, barely 18, and I think she felt like she had to teach me a few things. On one occasion I dropped and broke three of her plates, and I had to wander around Seattle to find replacements. Looking for the right plates was a lot easier than telling her I had broken them!

The Enyert’s house was a great big old house. The basement was a huge cavernous cellar that was the size of the entire house. I remember it being a very scary place to me, with a lot of stuff sticking out from the walls. Unfortunately, the washing machine was down there, and I hated to have to go down to do the wash. Everybody else would be in the kitchen, just at the top of the basement stairs, but at 18 years old I was so afraid to go down into that cave that I literally shook! I couldn’t stand to stay down there for any amount of time, so I ran up and down those stairs a lot while doing the wash.

Jobs with the telephone company were considered “essential” during World War II, and as a result I was able to transfer from Pueblo to Seattle without difficulty. I was a switchboard operator at home, but when I transferred I was a file clerk in the office. The office I worked in was close to the pier where Lou came in from Bainbridge Island every evening. The window in my office had a great view of the hill he walked up, and I could watch for him. When he got off the ferry he would come by my office, and we’d ride the bus home together.

We had about four months together. They were good months, a little hard at times, but we were together. He was given a leave to take me home, and then he was sent to Adak for the duration of the war.

Leona - Lou
March 1944

And it was a lot harder to put him on the train that time!

War-time Wedding

Eleanor Leona Carpenter - Louis Edward Butler
married 17 November 1943
Seattle, Washington

When I was home on leave, between Radio School at Moscow, Idaho and advanced training at Bainbridge Island in the Puget sound off Seattle, Leona and I talked about getting married in December. But after I got to Bainbridge, we decided that if Leona could get up to Seattle, and that was no easy undertaking, that we would get married. So my mom wrote me a letter of permission to get married (since I was not yet 21!), and Leona brought it out with her on the train. The transportation situation was difficult; gas was rationed and the trains were crowded with both civilians and the military always trying to get someplace a long ways off. She ended up sitting on her suitcase part of the way.

Cutting the wedding cake

The Koons family - wedding hosts
and perhaps one of Lou's navy buddies

We were married on November 17, 1943, at the home of the Koons family that we met at the University Ward. We had dinner and a cake, and it was awfully nice of the Koons to make it so nice for us. Leona worked at the telephone company while we were in Seattle, having transferred from the telephone company in Pueblo where she had been working, so we managed to have enough money to live on. Housing was almost impossible to find because of all of the military and all of the shipyard workers and all of the aircraft workers, etc. We only had to stay in a hotel for a few days until we were lucky to just find a room in a private home. They also rented out a couple more rooms in the upstairs of their house, and we shared a bath with a couple of other couples. We had no facilities for eating, so we ate out when we first got the room.

We hadn’t been there long, before Mrs. Enyert (the landlady) told Leona we could use their kitchen for our evening meal. Knowing we had nothing and were very young, she felt sorry for us and was a help to us.

Gasoline ration stamps

At this time, gasoline was rationed as well as much of the food such as meat, sugar, etc. We didn’t have [ration] stamps yet and Mrs. Enyert told Leona that they had a grocery store were we could buy our groceries. She would give Leona stamps and she would tell her not to tell her husband that she gave them to us! Then we would go to their store and Mr. Enyert would come around and give us stamps on the sly which he would say that some customer gave him because they didn’t need them! He would always say for us not to tell his wife because she would not like it as it is really against the law. So we had more [ration] stamps than we could use.

Grocery ration stamps

After they had let us use the kitchen for a while, they suggested that we could stay down in the living room after supper if we would like. So we now had the use of the kitchen and the living room, plus she had lots of advice for Leona about how to cook! They were very nice to us and we appreciated it very much.

Most of the time I could get off of the base for the night, but it would mean riding a bus to the Sound, catching a ferry and riding for about 30 minutes, then getting off at the pier in Seattle and catching a bus to ride another 30 minutes or more to our apartment. Then in the early morning I would be back on the bus – ferry - bus and back on the base to study or stand watch for the day, and then start all over again after work. But it was worth it! We were young and had plenty of energy for the demanding schedule.

Lou and Leona
so young - but so in love!


65 years later - still so in love!