Post-shooting Butler sets aside politics, focuses on ‘trying to move forward’

Kathy Kline moved to Butler as a child in the 1960s, when the city’s population was larger and, she recalled, there was a Woolworth’s and an Eat’n Park on Main Street. She said she once saw President John F. Kennedy pass through.

She’s remained in Butler, had a daughter, opened and later sold a book shop, worked as a librarian and served for 12 years on Butler City Council. She was at home Saturday when another presidential visit, by former President Donald Trump, ended in tragedy and shook the town along with a watching nation.

“There are an awful lot of folks that were experiencing a lot of traumatic feelings afterwards,” Kline said. “A lot of us are still shaking our heads, like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”

Four days after Butler became the site of a assassination attempt against a major presidential candidate and the dateline of news reports around the world, Steven Green said most of the city’s 13,400 residents seem to have put politics aside.

“For some that is difficult to do,” said Green, 49, who leads a faith-based social services provider and was born and raised in Butler. “In a small town, you pretty much know where people stand politically. To see two extreme sides support one another, that’s pretty awesome. That’s my hope for the whole country going forward.”

Political signs were rare on Main Street this week, but several signs urged prayers for victims of the shooting, as well as for the family of Corey Comperatore, the local volunteer firefighter and former fire chief who was killed.

“I find myself very encouraged with how Butler has handled this situation,” said Peter Bess, an assistant director of the local library. “… I don’t hear people blaming each other. I just hear people who are in shock, and who are grieving, and who are trying to move forward with their daily lives.”

The rally crowd was comparable to, or perhaps larger than the population of the city, and several people told PublicSource that it felt like everyone in town knew at least one person who attended.

Kline said her friend was in attendance but moved away from the stage before shots were fired because her sister felt sick. Bess said a library coworker lives by the Butler Farm Show complex where the rally was staged and heard what they assumed were fireworks, but turned out to be gunshots.

An evolving steel town

Thursday morning, the fifth day since the shooting, life appeared normal on Main Street, the central business district.

A construction crew worked on a storefront under renovation, a sign of continued renewal that some say has been a consistent source of optimism in recent years. New coffee shops and restaurants have popped up, and the venerable Penn Theater was recently restored and brought back to life.

“It used to be a little rough around the edges, but people have really been making a push to make it a better town,” said Kaylin Homa, a 20-year-old cosmetology student at the beauty school on Main Street. She said growing up she felt unsafe walking around town by herself, but these days she doesn’t worry. She hopes that Saturday’s shooting, in which the perpetrator and target were from outside of Butler, does not halt the town’s improvements.

“ I’ve seen the town make so much progress, and it would really be heartbreaking to see it all just crumble, right, because of one horrible person’s actions,” Homa said.

Kline saw the city shrink as the steel industry contracted, until it was in a state of “dormancy,” she said, when she joined the City Council in 2006. Things have improved since then, she said, with the old theater reopening and a new hotel opening in 2018.

Butler has about double the poverty rate and half the median household income compared to Pennsylvania overall, according to U.S. Census estimates. Its people are also twice as likely to be veterans compared to the commonwealth; about 12% of Butler residents are veterans.

Needs are met by a patchwork of church kitchens that serve meals to those who need them, a VA hospital and nonprofits like Robin’s Home, which provides care and shelter to women veterans.

“We’re cyclical like any other community in terms of economic challenges all over the place, but we’ve always been able to persevere,” Green said.

Sudden fame

“Every news station you look at, you see your hometown in the top right corner, Butler, Pa.,” Green said. “It’s surreal.

“I still don’t think we’ve totally made sense of what happened on Saturday and the importance of that event and what it’s going to mean moving forward in terms of what Butler is remembered for.”

Many of the national and international news reports on the assassination attempt have briefly described the town where it took place, summing it up as a mostly conservative place about 35 miles from Pittsburgh, blue collar and built on the steel industry.

Bess, 39, said there’s much more than that here.

Bess is part of a local group of board game enthusiasts, a community that he said is surprisingly large for a small town. There are game conventions twice a year. He said that hobby community is part of why he’s stayed here since arriving after college in 2009.

“I think all of us would rather this not be why people are finding out about Butler,” Bess said. “We are also the home of the Bantam Jeep . That's always been our claim to fame. And we would like to keep that.”

Edward DeSantis manages the Butler Symphony Association, and said the city’s resurgent cultural scene would surprise outsiders.

“Things that you wouldn’t expect of your typical Western Pennsylvania steel town,” said DeSantis, who moved to Butler five years ago from elsewhere in the region. “We have a symphony. This is going to be our 76th year. If you open a business here … the community really supports you and wants you to do well.”

Homa is enrolled at the Butler Beauty Academy on Main Street, with plans to put her new skills to use at her job at a local salon. She said she could envision living in Butler long term.

“It's a good town with good people,” Homa said. “I love the salon that I work at. I have made a community of friends and family here.

“We've had bad things happen here before, and we've recovered from them. So I'm hoping that the people of Butler can get to a better place.”

‘Now that’s how other people see us’

“I still don’t think we’ve totally made sense of what happened on Saturday and the importance of that event and what it’s going to mean moving forward in terms of what Butler is remembered for,” Green said.

The community proudly claims responsibility for developing the Jeep, originally for U.S. military use. Rock musician Bret Michaels hails from there. But for many in the country, the events of July 13 will stick.

“ I would want them to know, you know, to not judge the community by one really sad, horrific incident,” Kline said.

Instead, she said she wants people to think of Butler much like many other small American towns: family-oriented and close-knit.

“If you get involved in this community, people get to know you. And it would be like sitting around your own kitchen table,” Kline said. “... I'm sure Butler's not alone in those feelings, in that culture.

“Unfortunately, we only ever really hear of these wonderful small little communities when something horrific happens.”

DeSantis predicted that while the shooting undoubtedly changed the outside world’s perception of Butler, it won’t change the town’s perception of itself.

“Us here, I don't think it's really gonna change us at all,” DeSantis said. “We're gonna pick up the pieces and move on just like we always do.”

Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource's local government reporter. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org .

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