[nfbwatlk] South Park basketball courts honor Teresa Butz, slain last year, Seattle Times, July 24 2010

[Rita Szantay]

Noel thanks for posting this article. Teresa would have loved those
basketball courts. Teresa also attended that last convention where Scott
Labarre was the national rep. Thanks

Rita Szantay

Rita Szantay, MED, LMHC, CDP

1420 Fifth Avenue - Suite 2200

Seattle, WA 98101

206.224.7242

206.224.2880


-----Original Message-----
From: nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Nightingale, Noel
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 2:13 PM
To: nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org
Cc: Scott LaBarre (slabarre at labarrelaw.com)
Subject: [nfbwatlk] South Park basketball courts honor Teresa Butz, slain
last year, Seattle Times, July 24 2010

For those of you who had the pleasure of meeting Teresa Butz, who attended
several NFB of Washington events.


Link:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012436140_butz24m.html

Text:
South Park basketball courts honor Teresa Butz, slain last year
A year after the slaying of Teresa Butz, South Park community members came
together Friday afternoon to dedicate a new basketball court to her.
By Jill Kimball
Seattle Times staff reporter

Teresa Butz was all of 5-foot-2, but that didn't keep her from playing
basketball, a sport that favors 6-foot women.

That's why newly constructed basketball courts, just paces from Butz's
former home in South Park, were dedicated Friday afternoon to the avid
athlete and Seattle Storm fan.

It's been one year since Butz, 39, died at the hands of a man who broke into
the home she shared with her partner, threatening to kill both of them if
they didn't submit to his sexual demands. He raped and stabbed them both.
Butz died; her partner was hospitalized but survived.

Butz's partner, now 37, still feels the pain of the loss, but things have
gotten better.

"When someone leaves us - it doesn't matter how - there's a hole," the woman
said. "Doing something in the name of someone I love helps fill the hole a
little bit."

She stood amid more than 50 children, watching happily as they got free
basketball lessons from Seattle Storm players at two new courts outside the
South Park Community Center.

She said part of the money that made the new courts possible came from Fight
the Fear Campaign, a violence-prevention initiative created in honor of
Butz. The Storm and the Seattle Police Department also donated money.

"Community centers are often a focal point in the community," Storm CEO
Karen Bryant said. "We hope we're helping out a lot of kids and families by
giving them this positive place."

Seattle police Detective Kim Bogucki said South Park residents had
desperately wanted a new basketball court on what had been nothing more than
cracked asphalt surface a few months ago, but "in this economic climate,
there just haven't been the funds for it."

Bogucki found a way to bring several donors together in time to celebrate
Butz's life a year after her death.

"I knew her, and I knew she was a huge basketball fan," Bogucki said. "She
would have been impressed by this."

Butz's partner said the return to her old neighborhood was bittersweet.

"This is where we fell in love," she said. "It's hard to see the house."

The past year, she said, has been full of "tremendous pain and tremendous
sorrow, right alongside the greatest joys and the greatest triumphs" -
emotions she didn't know could exist in tandem.

It's an event like this, the unveiling of a new basketball court in a
low-income neighborhood where many struggle financially, that drives out the
sorrow in Butz's partner.

"This is healing and hopeful, and that's the one thing that makes the
tragedy bearable," she said.

Jill Kimball: 206-464-2136 or jkimball at seattletimes.com

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