A fond farewell

Butler's candor during battle with cancer was admirable

John Butler and I weren't old friends, but he routinely treated me like one. As I got to know him in recent years, either when visiting San Diego's picturesque training camp setting in LaJolla, Calif., at owners meetings, or discussing league topics over the phone, I rarely came away from a conversation with him in anything but a better mood than the one I went in with.

We're not supposed to do any rooting in the press box, and in almost every instance, that's a good rule to abide by. But I'll admit it, I was rooting for the Chargers and John Butler this past season. Not openly. But quietly, on the inside. How could you not?

From the moment last July when the man they called "Papa Bear" revealed he had been diagnosed with lung cancer, there were probably dozens of us on the NFL beat pulling for one particular team more than any other. That would be Butler's Bolts.

With lung cancer, you knew John's time was short. The hope, my hope, was that he would have one last glorious season to savor. One last happy championship run. And when San Diego last year started 6-2 under first-year head coach Marty Schottenheimer -- Butler's last significant hire as general manager -- it looked as if the Chargers were thinking right along with me, doing whatever it took to send Butler out in style.

Alas, the storybook didn't come true. They seldom do. The Chargers limped to a 2-6 finish, swooning once again late in the season, missing the playoffs and settling for a ho-hum 8-8 mark. This offseason, as the Chargers went back to work on the personnel front, I heard less and less encouraging news about John's battle. Few people, it seemed, gave him much of a chance to make it until opening day of 2003.

When word came Friday that John had died at age 56, my first thought was that it figures. After all, he was always first and foremost a personnel guy in football, and April is the time of year that NFL personnel men take center stage.

The most meaningful time I ever spent with Butler came last August, on the final day of the Chargers' training camp at the University of California-San Diego. I was there that sunny Tuesday to chronicle his battle with an inoperable lung tumor and to give readers a sense of how he was overseeing an NFL team while fighting for his life.

He gave me a half-hour or so of one-on-one treatment in his golf cart as he motored around the edges of San Diego's training camp fields, and I watched as he gathered in the shouted well wishes and heartfelt encouragement from the fans and camp visitors who were on hand that day. The kind words came steadily from all directions, and Butler greeted each one like it was the first time he had ever heard such love and concern.

"It's a little overwhelming," he said. "People have just been so good to me."

The twist is that Butler, a former Marine, wanted very much not to be the center of attention that day. He recoiled at the idea of turning the Chargers' season into a "win one for the Gipper" crusade, and had all but embargoed his story from being written about or covered once training camp opened.

Sitting beside him, I didn't really understand that he felt that way about his fight, because in our interview he talked so openly to me about his cancer, the chemotherapy and of receiving a recent encouraging phone call from cancer survivor Lance Armstrong. He was coping, and it was obvious that the coming football season was a huge part of what was keeping him going.

That's why, almost finished with my story that afternoon, I was surprised when longtime Chargers director of public relations Bill Johnston interrupted me to ask if I was writing anything about John and his illness. When I said, "Yes," he asked if I would be willing to come meet with Butler and discuss the story in the GM's camp dorm room.

As it turns out, John didn't want anyone doing any sympathy pieces about his plight. He feared taking the focus off his football team and putting it on himself. He wanted to know what I was writing and how I was writing it.

In another rare but justified diversion from standard journalistic practices, I offered to read him my story. Line by line. From beginning to almost end. After all, it was really his story. And it was far too important to take any chances with.

In the end, a tense moment turned touching. He heard me out, then thanked me for how I had handled the topic sensitively, without resorting to a maudlin point of view. And he said he liked that I allowed him to indirectly thank all the people who had sent so many prayers and comforting words his way. In return, I thanked him for trusting me with a story that was anything but just another day's work.

I thought about that day several times last year, when my mind returned to the Chargers' season and Butler's fight. It was a strange situation for us both to be thrust into, but it had created a bit of a bond that went a little beyond the normal reporter-source relationship. It made me pull for Butler and his team even harder.

I always had heard that Butler, for all his good-natured ways, could be gruff, short with the media and even vindictive if you crossed him. A teddy bear of a man at points, and a grizzly at others. I believed it, but I never saw that side of him. Now I never will.

What I'll remember about John Butler is that he was a man who seemed to care most about his family and his football team. And one who was predisposed to fight the good fight. No matter the arena.

"You know, at first they told me -- left untreated -- it would be four to nine months," Butler said last summer. "I was like, 'You don't understand. We have a season to play.' And now as we go through it and understand the treatment, you make up your mind to just battle. Just battle it.

"And if this doesn't work, I'll try something else. But in the meantime, I want to get these guys to feel what a championship feels like. I know they'd love it."

If San Diego wins a championship this season, Butler won't be there to celebrate it. But to a man, they'll know they couldn't have done it without him.

Training camp is still more than three months away. But something tells me there's going to be a whole lot of Chargers fans this year.

Don Banks covers pro football for SI.com.

 

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