CLASS NOTES
Turnaround Artist
A struggling student while at Wabash, turnaround specialist Bill Butcher ’87 returned to campus to tell students they will succeed because of their struggles, not in spite of them.
by Christina Egbert
Bill Butcher ’87 says he came to Wabash “by the grace of God.”
Coming back to Wabash for the second time after 30 years? That only happened because his daughter told him he had to.
Bill is the semi-retired owner of a consulting company, travels the world, and was a hugely successful bank turnaround specialist. His entire career was based around going into difficult situations where other people had failed and fixing them.
But up until his early 40s he had also been trying to find his own solutions to a problem he didn’t know he had. That’s when he found out he was dyslexic.
Bill had succeeded in high school. He finished eighth in his class because he was able to visualize what he was learning. He came to Wabash wanting to major in physics and math, but he quickly learned those visualization skills weren’t going to be enough.
“The head of the physics department came to my fraternity and said, ‘You’re not very good at this.’ I have trouble transferring short term memory into long term memory. Not ideal for a calculus/physics final. Panic sets in.”
“It really shakes your foundation. You wondered the degree of your stupidity—the degree of your ignorance.”
He also injured his hip his freshman year during a cross-country workout, ending his college athletic career.
“The next three and a half years were very difficult for me. I didn’t feel like I had an academic identity, and I had just lost my athletic identity. I wasn’t grounded, and I just felt like I was lost.”
He thought about transferring. He visited larger schools. But he never thought about quitting. He had grown up on food stamps on a farm in Morgantown, IN. The thought of being poor and hungry terrified him.
“So I studied my ass off.”
He graduated Wabash toward the bottom of his class but says he was proud of that fact. It wasn’t due to a lack of effort.
bill didn’t share any of these struggles with anyone while he was a student at Wabash. He was embarrassed, which made for a difficult—and lonely—four years. You can understand why he would be reluctant to come back.
Then Greg Estell ’85 asked him to share his story with students in the Wabash Liberal Arts Immersion Program last summer.
Bill told his teen-aged daughter, who was diagnosed with dyslexia when she was 11, that he didn’t want to go. She wasn’t having it.
“I don’t want my story out there,” Bill says, “but my daughter, who has helped me come to grips with it more, told me I had to come share with this group of students. She was like, ‘No dad. You helped me with this stuff. If it helps one person in there, go do it.’”
Standing in front of students in a classroom inside the Malcolm X Institute of Black Studies, Bill simplified what it was like to be dyslexic. There are some things he physically cannot comprehend. But then there are skills that he seems to be exceptional at, something he and his daughter call “the dyslexic advantage.”
“What I wanted to share with them is that, during my time at Wabash, I realized that I’m going to be successful because of my struggles, not in spite of them. Academics tend to measure and test how deficient you are in areas, but life doesn’t. Life rewards you for what’re you good at.
“I want them to see it doesn’t matter if you have a 2.5 GPA. They can meet me, who finished close to the bottom of his class, and see that it doesn’t matter. Once you graduate, the things you learn are transferable into your life and it’s not reflected in a GPA.
“I wish they had programs like this when I was at Wabash, but even if they had, I doubt I would have reached out. For WLAIP to reach out to students is a wonderful thing. Being part of a larger group sharing similar issues helps you realize that you’re not alone.”