encyclopedia of life

GENEVA -- Sunshine splashes the foliage at Fabyan Forest Preserve and sparkles on the Fox River's slight chop.

Not far from the villa Col. Fabyan called home, the bright midday sun shines down on a sundial commemorating John Butler. Passersby glance at the sundial -- at how its shadow tells time the old-fashioned way -- and then read the simple legacy of this local man.

"He was a source of invaluable historical information regarding the Fabyan estate, providing interpretive details and contributing to the development of historic publications," the rectangular plaque explains.

Those words only do so much to express how Fabyan affected Butler's life, and how he affected Fabyan's relevance into the 21st Century.

"He was such a historian for us," Darlene Larson, co-chair of Friends of Fabyan, said recently.

Butler's story, which began as a boy living on Fabyan's property in the early 1900s, gave him a relationship to local history that few have. It also shows the value of living historians who bring with them a wide sense of how our communities have changed and grown. The importance of their stories, knowledge and experiences becomes magnified as they begin to pass away. Butler died in 2003 at the age of 97.

"All the people with the history are gone," Butler's nephew Paul Soderstrom, of Batavia, offered during a conversation at the sundial.

The combination of growing communities with more new residents has reinforced the need to preserve voices of people like Butler, while also reminding folks that history happens daily and takes on all shapes.

George and Nellie Fabyan came to the Fox Valley in the early 1900s, creating the expansive Fabyan Estate across hundreds of acres south of what is present-day Geneva along the Fox River. The farmhouse was redesigned into The Villa by Frank Lloyd Wright, cages were built to house wild animals such as bears, and dozens of people worked on the estate -- including Butler's mother, Pearl.

John and his sister, Leah, lived on the estate -- it became known as Riverbank -- because of Pearl's job as a cook. John had his duties as well, which included bringing vegetables to the kitchen from the farm on the west side of present-day Route 31. Soderstrom recalls stories of his uncle using those opportunities to see the grounds closer to the river. Larson said Butler and his mother once took a boat south on the Fox to Batavia to purchase school clothes.

John's young adventures continue to be shared, according to his son, Jack. During a brief tour of the main lodge, Jack heard the guide point out the time an unknown boy went into the alligator pit. He quickly spoke up to add an important detail.

"I can tell you who that is: It was my father," Jack recalled saying.

An avid sportsman and pinpoint shooter, Butler even ice fished on the river, his son offered.

Jack, who attended the May dedication of the refurbished sundial to John Butler, said there was little doubt what this distinguished family meant to his father.

"We weren't that much into the Fabyans except through him," Jack said. "We went down there to picnic and he would tell stories. He had such a remarkable memory."

John Butler earned the distinction as a sharp-minded man from those who knew him. He worked as an engineer and tool-and-die maker, and was so mechanically inclined that he helped allay Larson's fear of taking a long flight to Japan by explaining to her exactly how an airplane works. His faculties intact, Butler drove his own car until nearly the day he died, Jack Butler said.

Those anecdotes of one man's journey bring us back to why Butler became so important in the history of Fabyan. With a mind so driven to detail, Butler brought nuance and facts to life whenever he spoke about it. The Friends of Fabyan described Butler this way in a recent newsletter: "We could always depend on him for his accurate memories of life on the estate and what a memory he had -- 'a walking encyclopedia!'"

The Butler Encyclopedia, so to speak, is best documented in Larson's book on Geneva history she wrote in the 1970s. Butler was one of the primary people she interviewed for the chapter on Fabyan, and that's where this quiet man gained his most notoriety.

"It was very, very important to him," Jack Butler offered. "He was more than happy to have that recorded for them."

Beyond the book or sharing with his family, Butler's love for Fabyan showed in the simplest of ways. "He'd go down there every day. He'd walk the estate," Larson said. "He would just see the people from over the years."