Friends, family celebrate Butcher’s life

By Amanda Bohman

Fairbanks Daily News Miner


Published September 3, 2006


Fans may know Susan Butcher as a four-time Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race champion, but many who gathered to mourn her loss on Saturday remembered her as a wife, mother, sister and friend.

“I got 21 years with the most special person who I can imagine spending time with,” said Butcher’s husband, David Monson. “I got 50 years out of those 21.”

Monson, along with daughters Tekla, 10, and Chisana, 5, was joined by about 700 people who gathered in the Davis Concert Hall at the University of Alaska Fairbanks to honor Butcher, who died of leukemia on Aug. 5. She was 51.

Those who paid tribute to Butcher included filmmaker George Lucas and Melinda Gates, wife of Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, who was also in attendance. Politicians, such as U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, former Gov. Tony Knowles and Lt. Gov. Loren Leman, attended. But the three-quarters full auditorium was dominated by fans, dog mushers and residents who considered Butcher a friend.

“I don’t think she’ll be replaced,” said Donna Krier, an amateur historian who followed Butcher’s dog mushing career, which began in the late 1970s not long after Butcher pulled into the driveway of Iditarod legend Joe Redington Sr. with about a dozen sled dogs stuffed inside a yellow Volkswagen Beetle.

Joee Redington Jr. said during a tribute that his father told him: “Susan Butcher will win the Iditarod.”

The Massachusetts native went on to win the race from Anchorage to Nome four times and placed among the top five finishers a dozen times until retiring from the race in 1994.

Monson opened the remembrance along with his daughters, who wore their mother’s clothing and jewelry and led two of Butcher’s dogs, Pesto and Huslia, onstage.

During his brief remarks, Monson noted he and Butcher had wed 21 years ago this weekend.

Other tributes followed, including from Butcher’s sister, Kate, before Lucas quietly took the stage.

The filmmaker said he considered Butcher an adopted sister and told a story Butcher had shared with him years ago. She was mushing down a frozen river when she broke through the ice.

“She felt she was done for,” Lucas said. “Her dogs came to the rescue and pulled her out … She used to say that everything that happened after that was a gift.”

Bill and Melinda Gates met Butcher and Monson at a dog mushing lesson in Eureka and became fast friends and traveling companions, Melinda Gates said during her tribute.

Gates spent time with Butcher during her last months. She told how Butcher walked to her chemotherapy treatments and attempted to walk home, occasionally calling for a ride from the numerous new friends she had made in Seattle.

“She loved people, and she loved challenging people around her,” Gates said. “There aren’t many regrets in Susan’s life.”

An hour before the ceremony, people who knew Butcher waited outside the auditorium and told stories.

The 1984 Iditarod champion, Dean Osmar of Clam Gulch, reflected on the 1982 Iditarod when he, Butcher and about five others were stuck in Shaktoolik, 125 miles east of Nome, because of a storm.

“We camped out, cooked bacon and told lies over the camp fire,” Osmar said.

Four-time Iditarod champion Martin Buser, 1978 champion Dick Mackey, Vern Halter and Ramy Brooks were also among the mushers at the memorial.

Scott “Goat” Otterbacher met Butcher in the mid-1980s when he worked as an Iditarod checker in Rohn.

“It was cold and wet,” he said, “and Susan was going back into the woods to get water for her dogs … You had to throw a bucket down over a cliff with a rope. I said, ‘Let me give you a hand with that.’ She just smiled that smile of hers and she said, ‘Thank you, but someone might see us. We’re not supposed to have any assistance.’”

The following winter, Butcher sent Otterbacher a postcard from Hawaii.

Karin Franzen, who sold Butcher dog harnesses before becoming her friend, remembered a time hot tubbing at Butcher’s home on the Chena River when Monson came outside carrying shower caps.

“We’ve got pictures sitting in the hot tub with those stupid shower caps,” Franzen said. “It was always fun to be there.”

Butcher was a staple at her daughters’ school, according to teachers.

“The care she took in packing their lunches,” said teacher Lyn Gilbert-Gard. “They had these wonderful lunches.”

Reporter Amanda Bohman can be reached at abohman@newsminer.com or 459-7544.