David Butler ’63

David Butler ’63 died unexpectedly January 10 at Thonburi Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand. A native of Wakefield, Massachusetts, David graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth as an English major and senior fellow. He was a brother of Kappa Sigma and member of Casque & Gauntlet. David embarked on a career in journalism and from 1966 to1974 was features editor of Playboy. Starting in 1971, David made several trips to Vietnam. In 1974, working for NBC News, he was an eyewitness to the last few months of the war and one of the last journalists airlifted from Saigon in April 1975. David worked for NBC radio and Newsweek in Bangkok and New York. In 1982 he moved to Washington, D.C., to research and write a book about his experiences in Vietnam, resulting in The Fall of Saigon, published in 1985 by Simon & Shuster. He continued working as a journalist and freelance writer in Bangkok and in 1989 donated seven boxes of his papers on the last days of the American presence in Vietnam to the Dartmouth College Library. David served on the board of the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Thailand. “I admired him greatly,” said Denis Gray, former bureau chief of the Associated Press in Bangkok. “He was one of the best writers around.” David continued to maintain close ties to Dartmouth, serving as a Dartmouth club secretary in 1994 to 1995 and class agent from 1993 through 2001. David is survived by his brothers Michael ’61 and Paul, sister Elizabeth and long-time partner Niwach Sudta.