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by Dan Veaner
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Friday, 10 October 2008 |
 Lansing's Recreation and Parks Department installed a tree and fence toppers on the town ballfields Tuesday to commemorate former Lansing Councilman Paul Butler, who died February 5th of this year. "It really makes the place look good," says Park Superintendent Steve Colt. "It's a nice safety feature. It's something we might not necessarily have gotten sooner than later, but it was a great way to allocate those memorial funds."
Butler grew up in Waterloo and went into the construction business with his father after graduating high school. He served in the U.S. Army in Korea in the early 1950s. Soon after marrying Anne Suydam in 1955 the couple moved to Ithaca, where he worked as Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds for the Ithaca City School District. He had a particular love for baseball, and was active for years as a coach in the Lansing Recreation Department as his three children grew up. He was elected to the Lansing Town Board in 1992 and continued to serve through 1999.
While serving n the Town Board he was active in the planning and later the move to the new town hall, as well as serving on the Liaison Officer to the Lansing Older Adults Program, Lansing Housing Authority, the Town Hall Annex and Recycling and Solid Waste, and the Lansing Planning Board.
(Left to right) Charlie Nedrow, Wayne Straw, Patrick Tyrrell, and Steve Colt spent about four hours Tuesday planting a Crimson King Red Maple tree and installing fence toppers on chain link fences to commemorate Paul Butler at the Lansing ballfields.
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"He was a really decent guy," Colt says. "He was on the board when my position became full time. He was a big supporter of it. His wife, Anne, has really been great, too. Working with her on this memorial has been great. Yesterday she came down and was able to play a part in that, too."
When he died earlier this year the family requested that donations be made in his name to the Recreation Department. Colt worked with the family to determine the best way to memorialize his love for baseball and years as a coach on the town fields. They settled on the idea of fence topping, which gives the chain link fences a finished look as well as protecting people from the top edge, as well as the maple tree.
The tree is an eight foot tall Crimson King Red Maple. Recreation Department staff placed some of Butler's ashes beneath the tree as they planted it Tuesday. The fence topper is a plastic tubing that lines the top of the fences in green and yellow. "It was a nice way to spread that memorial money around the whole baseball field complex, which was his strongest interest," Colt says.
Colt has been quietly promoting memorial plantings throughout the park system. Currently there are eight to ten trees in Myers Park, three or four in Ludlowville Park, and four or five memorial plantings around the ballfields, some of which include multiple trees. The Bev French memorial includes a bench and fire bushes that go around an ornamental tree. Some choose not to have a plaque. Memorials that do have them placed flush with the ground so they will not interfere with mowing and the overall look of the parks.
"It's a win-win," Colt says. "You get a living memorial that helps enhance the area."
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