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Hall of Fame
- Induction:
- 1978
- Class:
- 1955
Charles Thomas Butler ’55 was a member of the four-man bobsled team that took a Bronze medal at the Winter Olympics at Cortina, Italy, in 1956, his team having advanced to the Olympics after finishing first at the 1955 Olympics trials at Lake Placid, N.Y. In 1957, Butler was involved in two more championships. His two-man bobsled team took a Silver Medal at the World Championships in St. Moritz, Switzerland and also captured a Bronze Medal in four-man bobsled competition. There was more success for Tom Butler in 1958 when his four-man team finished first at the National AAU Championships at Lake Placid. A year later, in 1959, Butler took a first place with his four-man team and a third-place in the two-man bob at the World Championships held in St. Moritz. In five international races over a three-year period, his team – usually with Butler on the toughest job, the brakes – never failed to finish in the top three places in both two and four-man competition. Tom Butler started the first intercollegiate Bobsled Club in the United States at Brown in 1954. Lake Placid, which was the only official bobsled run this side of the Atlantic, is only a few miles from Butler’s former home in Saranac Lake. He succeeded in interesting more than a dozen fellow students in the sport, and it was a common (maybe uncommon!) sight to see Butler and as many students as could pile into his 1930 Model A ford – nicknamed “Itchie” – and take off from the campus of a Friday night on the 300-plus-mile trip north. Tom Butler also played four years of football at Brown in the “off season.” Now a salesman in Florida for Tifton Aluminum Co., Tom Butler and his wife, Joan, live in Boca Raton with their children: Melanie, 21, Jeanine, 18, and Tommy, 14.
