Nora Letitia Smith Butler

Our grandmother and mother, Nora Butler, was the first woman in Oregon to obtain a Public Utilities Carrier license which she used for the Butler family taxi service out of the Sheridan–McMinnville area. She led the way for our family tradition of women being strong, resourceful, scholarly, athletic, and very business-minded. We are all devoted to family, community, and spiritual values from her example.

Nora Letitia Smith Butler was born in the village of Hagley, Worchester, England near Birmingham on October 6, 1890, the sixth of eight children. Her parents, Henry and Frances Smith ran the historic Lyttleton Arms, an inn, hostelry, and pub. At the age of eight, Nora won a ten year continuing scholarship to King Edward’s School for Girls in Birmingham. She commuted forty miles a day by train and walked a mile to school. She excelled in scholarship, field hockey, and tennis.

In 1910, the opportunities for an English woman were very limited. At age nineteen Nora took the chance to travel to Canada, ultimately accepting a position to companion the Anglican minister’s wife in Vancouver, British Columbia, Anne Butler. Nora married Robert Butler, one of Anne’s five sons, in 1912. Nora and Robert’s children John, Robert, and Dorothy were born in B.C. before the family moved to Harmony, Oregon in 1919. The family farmed prunes. After the prune market collapsed, they moved to Sheridan.

Robert Butler drove for Greyhound and Nora became a librarian. She also picked and graded apples. Nora started a taxi service for the loggers to get to the camps after they arrived by bus. During her lifetime, in addition to the jitney service in the Sheridan–McMinnville area, Nora ran the Oregonian newspaper agency in Oregon City and was a founder of Butler’s Tire and Battery in Portland.

Nora was very physically active up to age fifty. She won the women’s tennis championship for Oregon City in her forties. When she was struck with rheumatoid arthritis there was little to be done in conventional medicine for this crippling disease. Although Nora was confined to a wheelchair for twenty-five years she remained intellectually active and obtained spiritual peace through Christian Science.

Nora’s husband Robert “Hemmy,” was killed in an auto accident in 1952 and her son, Robert, died in a plane crash in 1954. The family rallied around and both Nora and her son John moved in with her daughter Dorothy, Dorthy’s husband, Mike Grenier, and their three children: Robbie, Chuck, and Janet. Dorothy cared for her mother for twelve years. Granny Nora was a wonderful companion for the family and her spirit was an inspiration to all who knew her. She remained proficient in Latin, French, and German and was a great help for homework.

Nora died in Milwaukie, Oregon February 18, 1967. She will be remembered forever for her honesty, her intelligence, her enduring strength, and her loving compassion.

Written by Dorothy Grenier, her daughter and Suzan Mayer, her granddaughter