It was by fate and then luck that Olin John “Jack” and later “Doc Jack” Butterfield and Dorothy Benway of Sedalia met and married. Both were born in the late 1890s.

Dorothy’s father was a prosperous merchant in Lincoln, Nebraska, until a newly-purchased neon sign for his store sparked an electrical fire and destroyed his livelihood. He took the fire as a message, and the family moved to Denver.

Jack was raised in Indiana by educated parents who brought him to Colorado as a youngster. His uncle had founded the famous Butterfield Stage Line. Jack was a student at Denver Dental School when he and Dorothy chanced across each other at a cookout at the west end of Belleview.

Things between them were going well when World War I broke out. Jack was deeply patriotic, lying about his age to join the Marines. Dorothy relocated to Washington D.C. and worked as a secretary in the Pentagon. The relationship continued through letters transiting the Atlantic. At war’s end, Jack was awarded the United States Navy Cross and France’s War Cross.

Married in 1919, they decided afterward that Jack would pivot from dentistry to general medicine, and the couple moved back to Colorado. Three children, Rupert, Thomas and Virginia, were born from 1921 to 1925. Jack’s four years at CU Boulder and three children kept Dorothy and him quite busy.

After Virginia’s birth, the family relocated to Berlin for specialized surgical training and Budapest after that. The family came back to Colorado and Jack began to practice medicine in 1928 and was on the staff of Presbyterian Hospital in Denver for more than three decades, most of the time as the hospital’s head surgeon.

By 1931, Dorothy and Jack had found their home in Indian Creek in Jarre Canyon, purchasing land adjoining his father’s cabin. Their son Tom’s early education came via the one-room Indian Park School House, still standing today. Adding on to family property, Butterfield landholdings grew to 1,000 acres. Much of this was done by trading medical care to the locals for the acreage he sought.

Dorothy was delighted with their decision to remain in the country. She was the consummate homemaker, especially as cook and early home economist, canning fresh fruit during the growing season. Later in life she began to paint in oil—her best subjects were natural scenes from the northwest.

Jack liked to work the ranch, building a cabin of stones gathered by the boys. Also with their help, he enhanced the main dwelling with new rooms, a second floor and two fireplaces.

On good days, Jack could reach his hospital post within 35 minutes. Medically distinguished, he documented via a movie, his surgical technique for removing an appendix, cutting an hour off the operating time under anesthesia.

As is often the case with doctors’ spouses, Dorothy gained her own medical knowledge over the years. It was not uncommon for patients to call the Butterfield home, asking Jack to stop by. In an effort to help, Dorothy would make interim recommendations. When Jack finally stopped by and all was well, families would say, “the quack up the canyon (already) told us what to do.”

Jack was felled by a heart attack at age 70 and Dorothy would live for another 20 years.

 

By Joe Gschwendtner; photos courtesy of Sedalia Historic Museum and Gardens