While the stories of Jno. P. Butler and his goodness are plentiful in Midland' s history, perhaps no one can recall cherished memories of him like his own daughter.
   Jane McAbee recalled this week how she would tag along as a small child, walking to the bank on weekends with her father to help him open the mail and take care of other small office chores a girl her age could handle.
   McAbee remembers her father as being "affectionate" and said it was frequently easy to see just how important his work at the bank and in the community was to him.
   By the time First National Bank was closed in October 1983, Butler had been given the position as chairman emeritus of the bank's board. He maintained an office but no longer had a direct hand in the bank's day to day operations.
   The day the bank failed was rough on a lot of Midlanders and West Texans, but, as would be expected, particularly so on Mr. Butler. Mrs. McAbee's admiration and continued love and respect for him were evident in her voice as she told the story of that day.
   "Father's sectretary told me that on October 13, 1983, the day the bank closed, father had taken his Daybook and  written, 'Goodbye, old friend.' "
   McAbee said that night, she and her mother found him sitting in a recliner in front of the television watching the World Series.
   "How are you?" they asked him.
    "I'm fine," McAbee recalled him saying. "We saved the depositors their money."
    McAbee shared that her father's deep affection and close relationship he had developed with her husband, Kim McAbee, helped pull him through the tough times of the mid 1980s. So close were they, in fact, that Mrs. McAbee said her father never got over the death of her husband.
   "Kim died in 1995. Father died in 1997," she said.
    Mr. Butler's widow, Alva, would live to be 107.

Stories abound regarding the goodness of Midland's people through the years. The names of CJ Kelly and Jno. P. Butler come up repeatedly in interviews for "A History of Character: The Story of Midland, Texas."

Clarence Scharbauer III, recently elected Chairman of the Board of trustees at Texas Christian University, and one of four descendants of Clarence Scharbauer, Jr., told a story last month about the giving spirit of the members of the First National Bank board of directors. The bank was a treasured institution in the community in those days before it was closed in 1983.

"John Butler was one of the four or five men I've had the pleasure of knowing in this community that are good men from the heart. C.J. Kelly is one, Moose Trobaugh, Joe Pevehouse. They all put their money where their mouth is and if they didn’t have the money, they'd go get someone else to do it.

" Kelly was unbelievable. The stories I hear ... he’d sit down, and say, 'OK, the baseball stadium, we've got to do something about that. Or, the YMCA, we've got to fix it.' And he'd go around the table and say, 'Can you do twenty grand? Can you do thirty? Can you do 50? And he’d raise the money that had to be raised in, like, 20 or 30 minutes.

"Butler was a kinder, nicer, sweeter gentleman. C.J. was, 'Charge, let’s go.' They raised more money around that board table."

Scharbauer said his dad would grumble on board meeting days, saying, 'We’ve got another board meeting and it’s probably gonna cost me twenty grand.' But that’s how it worked."

Read more stories like this one in "The History of Character: The Story of Midland, Texas," a book about Midland, Texas to be published in 2012.