Look Back: All-American football and World War I hero hailed from Nanticoke
Aug. 20—Nanticoke was the birthplace of an All-American football player, a volunteer of the Mexican War, a decorated hero as a U.S. Army captain and major during World War I and a Luzerne County assistant district attorney.
Thomas Alexander Butkiewicz was born June 21, 1883, to Nanticoke postmaster Thomas Butkiewicz and his wife, Anna. After graduating Nanticoke High School, he studied law at Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
While attending UPenn, Butkiewicz signed up to play football for the Quakers, playing on the offensive line for three years. For the 1904 season, the Quakers went undefeated outscoring all of their opponents 222-4 to a 12-0 record and being named by sports writers of the time as the nation's best collegiate football team in the country.
Butkiewicz was admitted to the Luzerne County Bar Association on Sept. 25, 1905, and began his law career being named assistant district attorney under District Attorney Abram Salsburg.
"Assistant District Attorney Thomas Butkiewicz again held forth in court room No. 1 yesterday and succeeded in disposing a number of cases on the criminal calendar," reported the Wilkes-Barre Record on April 25, 1908.
Butkiewicz continued his career with the district attorney's office through the 1900s and into the early 1910s. As the conflict with Mexico grew over the border, Butkiewicz answered the call for volunteers and enlisted in the U.S. Army as a lieutenant in 1916, taking a leave of absence as an assistant district attorney.
"He served for several months and developed a military aptitude that elevated him from lieutenant to captain to major," the Record reported.
As the United States took a neutral position at the outbreak of World War I, Butkiewicz volunteered to go to France as a member of the Princeton Unit of the Lafayette Squadron in late 1916.
"His enlistment with the French Army expired in 1917 and Attorney Butkiewicz joined the American forces which were beginning to arrive at the French front. He had been gassed and adjudged physically unfit for further services and decorated by the French nation for bravery," reported the Record.
Instead of returning home, Butkiewicz remained in Europe while becoming deputy commissioner of the American Red Cross in Warsaw, Poland.
At the end of World War I, Butkiewicz joined Herbert Hoover, when the future President of the United States was director of the Commission for Relief in Belgium and Poland in 1917, in a tour of the Netherlands. While in Poland, the Polish government honored Butkiewicz for his bravery during the Great War.
Butkiewicz returned home and was honored with a testimonial dinner in Nanticoke. He resumed his duties as an assistant district attorney and became active in civic and political affairs not only in Nanticoke but in Luzerne County during the 1920s.
Butkiewicz returned to Poland in February 1922 as he was an invited guest by the Catholic Church to meet Pope Pius XI for his work with the American Red Cross.
District Attorney Thomas Lewis in November 1926, named Butkiewicz his first assistant district attorney earning an annual salary of $3,600.
In the latter half of the 1920s, Butkiewicz's health began to declined due to being gassed during World War I. He traveled to Castle Point, N.Y., to be admitted to a government hospital in 1928 and died at the medical facility on Aug. 13, 1930.
"Illness contracted while serving in the military forces of the French and American governments during the World War culminated in death yesterday of Assistant District Attorney Thomas A. Butkiewicz," the Record reported Aug. 14, 1930.
Butkiewicz's obituary included his military service and being honored with five citations from the French government.
A military funeral was held at his home on Broadway in Nanticoke and at Holy Trinity Cemetery, Nanticoke, where he was buried.
