Description:
Pictured here are seminarians from Little Flower Church enjoying a break from their studies during a snowstorm in the winter of 1938-39. Little Flower, or Florecita to its largely Hispanic congregation, operated a seminary for the Order of Discalced Carmelites for many years. This photo was taken on Wheeler Street (now SW 10th) just north of Florecita. Only Father Robert Butler, the tall man on the left, has been identified in this photo.
Father Butler was born in Los Angeles in 1915 and came to Florecita in 1938 to study for the priesthood and was ordained in 1943. After suffering some mental illness, Father Butler’s duties were limitied but he served faithfully in the ministry -- feeding Oklahoma City’s poor and homeless by passing out mackerel sandwiches every morning. In the winter of 1979, the Oklahoma City Police Department commended Father Butler by telling him, "Many of our city’s homeless would have died this winter had you not fed them." Father Butler died December 31, 1981 in Oklahoma City.
Thanks to Father John Michael of the Oklahoma Carmelite Archives for his assistance
FURTHER READING
Monahan, David, One Family: One Century: A Pictographic History of the Catholic Church in Oklahoma 1875-1975. Oklahoma City: Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, 1977.
Smith, Michael M. The Mexicans in Oklahoma. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980.