Larry Butts

Larry Avith Butts (October 2, 1935 – December 25, 1993) was a politician, civic and judicial leader in Oconee County, South Carolina in the 1980s & '90s.

Vital statistics

Butts was born in 1935 in Alto, Georgia to Furman Simpson (died 1942) and Pearl Irene Lee Butts (died 2008). After his father's death in 1942, the family relocated to their original home in Westminster, South Carolina, where Butts graduated from Westminster High School in 1954. In 1961, Butts met and married the former Doris Evelyn Pearson of Walhalla, SC. They produced three offspring: Gary David, Dale Lane, and Merrill Kris.

Career

Butts entered local politics in 1980 running for the Democratic nomination for Oconee County Council District IV. He won the primary and November general election and went on to winning a second term in 1984. In 1988, toward the end of his second term, Butts was appointed by State Senator Alexander S. Macauley to sit on the summary court in Oconee County. After approval by Governor Carroll Campbell, Butts served as one of three summary court judges for the county, eventually being named Chief Magistrate.

Illness & death

On December 17, 1993, Judge Butts collapsed in his chambers and was rushed to Oconee Memorial Hospital and from there to Greenville Memorial Hospital. A battery of tests were done, including a heart catheterization, but no causes for his collapse could be found. Doctors sent him home on Monday, December 20. Butts reported being dizzy in a Wal-Mart shopping center on Christmas Eve and was seen by Emergency medical services responders, who couldn't find any need to admit him to the hospital. The following evening, Christmas Day, at 5:40 PM, Judge Butts collapsed again and died instantly in the bathroom of his home in Westminster. An autopsy conducted ruled the cause of death to be an aortic aneurysm, which doctors had been unable to see, due to its hidden location in his body.