Butch Johnson passes away

[Don Roley]

I just heard the news that Butch Johnson of Texas passed away recently after a few days in a coma.

Much of what I have heard about "Butchie" came from Raplh Severe and it was not pleasent. But even he had nice things to say about "Butchie" in the thread at Kutaki in memory of him. Johnson may have had his faults, but there seems no lack of people willing to talk about his good points. And judging by the responses, he seems to have had many, many good points.

I never interacted much with him myself when he was here. He seemed a barrel of laughs, but I am a dark, brooding sort that has even worse manners in person than I do here. So he hanged out in some areas, and I in others. My longest experience with him was at the party at the honbu after one of the Daikomyosais. I remember he was keeping us in stiches with a story about moonshine.

Now it appears I will never get the chance to know him better at all.

I do not know if this or the section of martialtalk devoted to fallen warriors is the appropriate place to put this. But I myself visit the later only rarely and there were so many people in the Bujinkan that knew him that I thought I would let them know here if they had not heard it already.

 

[r.severe]

I would like to post this reply...

While Butch trained under me during 1989 to 1993 he was the junior of Eddie Moore, Don Smith, Andre Vaguine, Larry Graham, Steve Lefebvre, Andrew Tate and Brian Komen.
I'm sure if you want stories about his past training before me and during this time you could ask these guys who were his seniors during training with them.
Steve Lefebvre was the only guy to remian in the Bujinkan out of these students who were Butch's seniors and teaches up north.

He filled out an application for training with all of his military, family, martial arts training and ranking. When Butch first came to train he had little if almost no martial arts training. He moved from up North from his sisters where he said he was living and took some taichi and jujutsu but had no ranking in them. I still have both he filled out with a year apart from each. I got to know him from hours of teaching him over those years and many many lunch and dinner parties, seminars, and get-togethers. You could say I knew him very well before the many crazy and bizarre stories about him started about his past life. A lot has been said about Butch and by Butch about his life and the stories I got during my time training with him are far different from what I heard in the late 90’s.
I knew his son too. Butch called him “Bouk”. He came to all of our training with Butch until he went to live with Butch’s sister (conversation from Butch). He was a very shy and good boy.
On the subject of tapes.. I have record of Butch training with me.. hours of footage during his white, green and black belt experience. This footage allows you to see Butch and his abilities during this time period and his wonderful training state of mind. He was always up for good fun and hard training.
He was always helpful to the younger guys and had a smile for everyone. Butch was a good buddy with everyone in class and always seemd to be in class regardless of the weather or his health.

Butch was promoted to Shodan in 1991 a few months after the Texas taikai.
I stopped teaching Bujinkan arts publicly and began my AOC training again in January 1993. At this time he was honorably promoted to nidan as a few other students Andy Breton and Nancy Pirro.
Butch first liked AOC for it's direct and simple methods. He had a hard time with moving his leg above his hip area because of his hip stiffness. He just was a powerful guy.. but moved very well on his feet.
Butch kept training with me for some time in AOC but the hard contact and high level of aerobics were to much for his body and he backed off his training with me and the group here in Dallas.
Butch left my Academy and started training in savate with Paul here in Irving Texas. Go figure..
Butch and I had our differences for about two years during 1993 to 1995 when he passes out stories that were not true about his training with me and others.
These things were never really cleared up and we never spoke about them..
The rest of his life.. till his passing was journey I'm sure...

ralph severe, kamiyama