? John Butler, who has been celebrated as perhaps boxing’s only fighter with a PhD., just happened to be at the gym one day in Grand Rapids when boxing legend and fellow Hall of Famer Wes Ramey noticed him and asked him if he had ever boxed.
He said he didn’t know anything about it, but Ramey convinced him to hop into the ring with another fighter, and unbeknownst to Butler, an experience and accomplished fighter. Butler knocked the other fighter down, started working with Ramey and became the legend’s star pupil.
Butler, 14 at the time and packing some power in his punches, right away won the city and state 112-pound novice fly weight championships. He eventually collected Golden Gloves state titles in 1951, ’52 and ’53 moving up a weight class each year.
Also, in 1953, he became the first Grand Rapids boxer, and one of only four ever, to win the national Golden Gloves championship.
After high school he was thinking a professional boxing career, but his mother wanted him to go on to college. Ramey told him to do what his mother said, and he took advantage of a scholarship offer to Michigan State University.
As a member of the boxing team at MSU from 1954 to ’57 he won all of his dual matches. He made it to the NCAA Tournament and was topped in close matches three times, but in 1957 he was awarded the DeWitt Portal Trophy of sportsmanship at the NCAA Tournament.
He excelled as a student and eventually earned his PH.D in education administration while working as a teacher and administrator in the Grand Rapids Public Schools.
He served in the U.S. Marine Corps and then started with the GRPS as a science teacher at Central High in 1961. After seven years he moved into administration and worked at three other schools in the system.
In 1978 he went to work for the City of Grand Rapids as Training Coordinator where for the next 15 years he trained employees in ways to be more responsive to the general public as well as trained employees who desired to become supervisors.