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Traveler stays at childhood home
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By Natalie Fieleke
nfieleke@newstribune.com
When Ron Butler, a retired pilot from Austin, began to look back to his family's past through genealogy, he wondered if his childhood home in Jefferson City was still standing.
Through a distant relative and a March News Tribune article on local bed and breakfasts she mailed him, Butler learned that not only was his home still standing, but that he could stay the night there.
“As soon as I heard it was a bed and breakfast, it was a done deal,” said Butler of his return to 306 Dunklin St., which is now the Briar Rose Inn Bed and Breakfast, opened in January by Jeanette Wilkerson.
“I walked in and said ‘I'm home again,'” he said.
When Wilkerson bought the home four years ago, it was divided into an upstairs and a downstairs apartment, the same as it was when Butler was a boy. She set to work renovating the upstairs suite, refinishing the hardwood floors, cleaning and restoring a Victorian feel to the home with antiques.
But it wasn't the finished upper suite Butler requested for his night's stay at the inn. He wanted the almost-completed bottom floor, the one he, his mother, father and two brothers lived in up until the time Butler was two years old. The Butler family moved to Jefferson City in 1939 when Butler's father, Gene Butler, went to work for Missouri State Highway Patrol Troop A. Ron Butler was born at St. Mary's Hospital in 1940, and his mother, Harriet Butler, often spent time alone with her three boys, since then-Gov. Lloyd Stark selected Gene to be his personal patrol driver.
Since Butler was only two at the time he lived in Jefferson City, he has only one memory of the house at the time, a picture of himself in a stroller sitting in the backyard. But he does recall one thing about his early years.
Almost every day, his mother would take the boys for a walk, down to the Missouri Pacific Railroad Station to see the trains coming in from 2:45 until 3:15 p.m.
“We used to watch the trains come in, and I remember seeing soldiers hanging out the windows of the trains,” Butler recalled. “Most of them were probably going to war since it was 1941.”
Butler went on to join the military himself, becoming an Air Force pilot, and then after his retirement in 1984, a corporate pilot. These days he stays busy with genealogy and as a volunteer deputy sheriff for Travis County, Texas.
But on Thursday, he sat in what was once his parents' parlor at the house on Dunklin Street and talked of its past and future with Wilkerson, the new owner.
Meeting Butler added to Wilkerson's historical perspective of a house she's still getting to know.
“So many things have been torn down and shifted around,” Wilkerson said. “Not a lot of people have the opportunity to stay in the house they were born in.”
Through a distant relative and a March News Tribune article on local bed and breakfasts she mailed him, Butler learned that not only was his home still standing, but that he could stay the night there.
“As soon as I heard it was a bed and breakfast, it was a done deal,” said Butler of his return to 306 Dunklin St., which is now the Briar Rose Inn Bed and Breakfast, opened in January by Jeanette Wilkerson.
“I walked in and said ‘I'm home again,'” he said.
When Wilkerson bought the home four years ago, it was divided into an upstairs and a downstairs apartment, the same as it was when Butler was a boy. She set to work renovating the upstairs suite, refinishing the hardwood floors, cleaning and restoring a Victorian feel to the home with antiques.
But it wasn't the finished upper suite Butler requested for his night's stay at the inn. He wanted the almost-completed bottom floor, the one he, his mother, father and two brothers lived in up until the time Butler was two years old. The Butler family moved to Jefferson City in 1939 when Butler's father, Gene Butler, went to work for Missouri State Highway Patrol Troop A. Ron Butler was born at St. Mary's Hospital in 1940, and his mother, Harriet Butler, often spent time alone with her three boys, since then-Gov. Lloyd Stark selected Gene to be his personal patrol driver.
Since Butler was only two at the time he lived in Jefferson City, he has only one memory of the house at the time, a picture of himself in a stroller sitting in the backyard. But he does recall one thing about his early years.
Almost every day, his mother would take the boys for a walk, down to the Missouri Pacific Railroad Station to see the trains coming in from 2:45 until 3:15 p.m.
“We used to watch the trains come in, and I remember seeing soldiers hanging out the windows of the trains,” Butler recalled. “Most of them were probably going to war since it was 1941.”
Butler went on to join the military himself, becoming an Air Force pilot, and then after his retirement in 1984, a corporate pilot. These days he stays busy with genealogy and as a volunteer deputy sheriff for Travis County, Texas.
But on Thursday, he sat in what was once his parents' parlor at the house on Dunklin Street and talked of its past and future with Wilkerson, the new owner.
Meeting Butler added to Wilkerson's historical perspective of a house she's still getting to know.
“So many things have been torn down and shifted around,” Wilkerson said. “Not a lot of people have the opportunity to stay in the house they were born in.”
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