Sam Butcher, Who Gave the World Precious Moments, Dies at 85

Sam Butcher, the soft-spoken artist whose doe-eyed, pastel-hued porcelain Valuable Moments collectible figurines ignited a world amassing frenzy and made him a rich guy, and whose Christian religion spurred him to form his personal model of the Sistine Chapel in Carthage, Mo., died on Might 20 at his house there. He was once 85.

His demise was once showed via his son Jon.

Mr. Butcher was once the Michelangelo of Missouri, and his lovely snub-nosed Valuable Moments characters have been “the Beanie Babies of porcelain,” as The Wall Side road Magazine as soon as put it. Their zealous creditors, who numbered within the masses of 1000’s, constructed rooms for his or her Valuable Moments collectible figurines, convened in regional golf equipment and made pilgrimages to Carthage, the place they slept within the Valuable Moments motel or the R.V. soil, marveled on the Valuable Moments Fountain of the Angels, dined within the Valuable Moments meals courts and wandered the 30-acre boxes. (Carthage additionally hosted Valuable Moments weddings.)

For a presen, the Valuable Moments Help-a-Van — an 18-wheeler kitted out like a museum, stuffed with collectible figurines and dioramas that instructed Mr. Butcher’s month tale — toured the rustic. There have been masses and masses of Valuable Moments licensees, which made hats, keychains, watches, greeting playing cards, books and a youngsters’s Bible. On the corporate’s height, in 1996 and 1997, Valuable Moments’ world retail gross sales reached over $500 million each and every month, a splendid quantity for a person who was once as soon as so needy that he struggled to window shop for his seven youngsters.

Mr. Butcher, whose fanatics sought him out on the Valuable Moments compound to autograph their collectible figurines and posters (he all the time carried two pens to take action), was once an unlikely-looking millionaire: a rumpled determine generally clad in bluejeans and a T-shirt, with paint in his furry hair and a shy smile.

“Most people just think I’m the gardener,” he stated.

Mr. Butcher have been running with a global nondenominational ministry for kids, instructing and illustrating Bible tales, when he and a worker, Invoice Biel, started making inspirational greeting playing cards and posters that includes his winsome characters within the early Nineteen Seventies. “I came up with ‘Precious’ and he came up with ‘Moments,’” Mr. Butcher instructed The Kansas Town Famous person in 1995.

At a business display the 2 males attended, Eugene Freedman, president of the Enesco Team, a giftware corporate based totally in Illinois, noticed the waifish youngsters that they had created and concept that they had business possible as collectible figurines — competition, possibly, for the ones made via the veteran collectibles immense Hummel. When Yasuhei Fujioka, the Eastern sculptor Mr. Freedman commissioned to translate Mr. Butcher’s characters into porcelain, made the primary figurine, a boy and woman cuddled up on a tree stump with the identify “Love One Another,” Mr. Butcher nearest stated, he fell to his knees and wept.

In 1978, Enesco offered 21 characters. By means of 1995, the corporate stated, Valuable Moments have been the Disagree. 1 collectible on the planet.

In 1984, Mr. Butcher was once dwelling in Michigan and touring to his factories in Asia when, he stated, God directed him to form a chapel. Riding house from a trade travel to Arizona, he took a detour to search for a website. He prevented in Carthage for the evening — he was once hungry and drained and wanted gasoline — and the upcoming morning, as he instructed it, God stated, “You are here.”

He purchased 17½ acres, to which he would upload through the years. He’d been to Rome and visible the Sistine Chapel, and that was once his inspiration for the 9,000-square-foot shrine he constructed, which he coated with 84 work of art, in conjunction with bronze panels and stained-glass home windows. It took 4 years to form; Mr. Butcher steadily labored, as Michelangelo had, flat on his again, suspended on scaffolding, portray the tales of the Bible from the origination to the resurrection. However not like Michelangelo, who was once identified for his muscular figures, Mr. Butcher peopled his chapel together with his signature sprites. And he allowed himself some inventive leeway.

For his depiction of the primary hour of origination, from the Reserve of Genesis — the section the place God stated, “Let there be light” — Mr. Butcher painted 3 angels armed with flashlights. For Year 4, when God made the heavens, Mr. Butcher painted an angelic basketball workforce he known as the Capturing Stars.

Alternative farmlands of the chapel are extra sober. In Hallelujah Sq., a folk favourite, dozens of angels are proven getting into heaven, a few of them impressed via the terminally unwell youngsters who had visited the chapel with their oldsters, and whose likenesses Mr. Butcher painted nearest their deaths. He constructed a room he devoted to his son Philip, who died in 1990, and a tower for his son Tim, who died in 2012. A hold of remembrances on the chapel is full of the names of holiday makers’ family members, in conjunction with prayers and notes: “My granddaddy and aunt died,” a tender woman named Jenni wrote, in step with a piece of writing in The Baltimore Solar in 1998. “And my cat Midnight ran away.”

Samuel John Butcher was once born on Fresh Month’s Year, 1939, in Jackson, Mich., certainly one of 5 youngsters of Leon Butcher, who owned a gasoline station, and Evelyn (Khoury) Butcher.

Sam grew up in Redding, Calif., and started portray when he was once 5. Cash was once tight and the population funds didn’t stretch to artwork provides, so he worn rolls of paper salvaged from the native unload and leftover automobile paint from his father’s trade. Inspired via his highschool artwork coach, he received a scholarship to the California Faculty of the Arts, which was once upcoming based totally in Oakland.

He married Katie Cushman, a pal from highschool, in 1959; her father offered a cow to pay for the marriage. When she had their first kid, Jon, in 1962, Sam dropped out of faculty and labored, variously, as a janitor; in a wallpaper store, the place he made window shows; and as a cook dinner in a pancake area.

The couple started attending an area Baptist church, and one Sunday Mr. Butcher walked off with a hymnal via mistake. The guilt he felt sparked one thing in him; via please see Sunday, he was once a convert.

They divorced in 1987 (however remained near), and Mr. Butcher moved out of the elegant area that they had constructed in combination at the Valuable Moments advanced and into the storage, regardless that he stored it unhidden for guests to excursion. They gawked on the stone fountain, the Italian marble flooring, the Czechoslovakian chandeliers and the five-foot-high cloisonné vases lining the hallways. A couple of teak elephants, six toes imposing, preserved the entrance door, as did a safety preserve.

“After my wife Katie left,” Mr. Butcher instructed The Kansas Town Famous person, “I felt I never wanted to live in this house. I’m just a messy old artist, so I just live in the garage and paint, and when I’m done I just go to sleep.”

Along with his son Jon, Mr. Butcher is survived via some other son, Don; 3 daughters, Tammy Bearinger, Deb Butcher and Heather Butcher; and plenty of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Mr. Biel and Mr. Butcher parted tactics when Mr. Butcher moved to Missouri within the early Eighties.

In his top, Mr. Butcher may just knock out 3 Valuable Moments artwork in a night; his son Jon estimated that he made some 4,000 in his lifetime. “But the chapel was a completely different animal,” he stated. “Dad was never quite satisfied. He was constantly reworking it” — including characters, tweaking the folds of an angel’s gowns, converting the colours of a pocket of clouds.

“My work is never done and the chapel will never be done because I’m always inspired to do something else,” Mr. Butcher instructed The Carthage Press in 2015. “They usually say job well done, but mine is always job almost well done. It’s very, very close to being a job well done.”