Roy Everett Butler

Author Bio — Roy Everett Butler

Roy Everett Butler is a former U.S. Marine Major and jet aviator, retired Pan Am captain, flight‑training director, artist, and late‑life poet. Born in 1932 in San Francisco and raised across from Golden Gate Park, Butler’s life carried him from Marine Corps aviation training in Pensacola to the skies over Korea, and later into a distinguished career with Pan American World Airways. As a captain and system director of flight training, he helped shape the airline’s transition into the jet age and contributed to aviation safety research that influenced modern cockpit communication practices.

After decades devoted to flight, leadership, and teaching, Butler returned to fine art and painting, eventually discovering poetry in his nineties. Writing became a new creative chapter — one rooted in memory, gratitude, companionship, and the quiet reflections that come with age. His work blends themes of family, love, loss, aviation, and the gentle presence of the four rescue cats who share his home.

At 93, Butler published Age Is a Garden, a collection of poems drawn from a lifetime of experience and the stillness of late‑life creativity. He continues to write daily from his home in Linwood, New Jersey, where he lives with his daughter and remains surrounded by the stories, skies, and creatures that inspire his work.