Howard Butler

Howard Edward Butler of Shaker Heights, Ohio, died March 29, 2013, seventeen days shy of his 90th birthday. He was preceded in death by his wife Barbara Jean Burroughs Butler and is survived by his daughter Susannah Marie Butler, his three sons, John Stillman, Howard James, and Richard Edward, his grandchildren Julia, Alexander, and Patrick Butler and Weston and Vivian Miller, and his sister Sarah Elizabeth Schafer.

Born in Osborn (now Fairborn), Ohio, he served as US Navy radioman in World War II, after which he graduated from General Motors Institute (now Kettering University). Subsequently, he worked at General Motors' Inland Manufacturing Plants in Dayton and Vandalia, Ohio, first, as a Plastics Engineer and then, as a Quality Control Engineer. He retired from GM in 1980 and started Quality Control Inc. to provide consulting and training services related to quality systems. He authored books on statistical process control, which were used as college-level textbooks and were translated into several foreign languages.

He was an avid golfer, retiring with his wife Jean to that duffer's Mecca, Hilton Head Island, SC. They later moved to Austin, TX, and ultimately to Shaker Heights, OH, just outside of Cleveland. He and Jean were very active in Unitarian-Universalist Fellowships wherever they lived. He served as Board President, Treasurer, and on committees at the Miami Valley Fellowship in the 1960s, at the Stillwater Fellowship north of Dayton in the 1970s, and at the Fellowship on Hilton Head Island after that. He and Jean loved to travel, especially on numerous freighter cruises, including one around the world in 1989. He enjoyed reading non-fiction books, usually about science and technology, both new and old.



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