Albert "Sun" Butler

1956 - 2022

"Sun" Albert Butler
December 27, 1956 - December 24, 2022
Chapel Hill , North Carolina - Sun Albert R Butler passed peacefully on December 24, 2022.
He is survived by his halfside/life partner of 26 years, Claire Marie Miller, by his sisters, Lynn Bernhardt, Juel Gardiner and Beth Reagle, his step-children, James Pohlen, Jessica Pohlen and Danielle Chu, and grandchildren Addy, Nate and Niko. Days before his passing his fourth grandchild Benjamin Chu was born.
Sun was Cherokee and he walked the Red Road. He attended the Occaneechi Saponi Pow Wow in Mebane just two months before he passed. He was a Sun Dancer in the Lakota tradition and danced the required four times. He was initiated as a pipe carrier and performed sweat lodges for his community.
Sun's farming heritage from his Grandfather was tobacco. His family farm in Mecklenburg, VA was the place he learned the skills that later became his passion to return to organic tobacco, honoring both sides of his heritage. With his partner, Micu, they created the organic tobacco for American Spirit and the Santa Fe Tobacco company.
Sun's work experience included 18 years of tobacco research for NCSU. He followed that with 10 years of farming tobacco on the family farm in Boydton, VA. Then, like many in that dying tradition, he had to sell the farm that had reached back into generations before him.
Sun continued to farm, creating with Claire the Luna Blues Farm with organic blueberries, a popular U-pick near Chapel Hill. He was the farm manager at
Interfaith Food Shuttle for seven years. He ran programs with the volunteers and children's groups coming to this farm that fed so many. He traveled to Cuba to see how they have maintained sustainable farming practices. While there, he even helped a local Cuban with a song the man created for his sweetheart. Sun had a passion for music and was an excellent singer and guitar player, often performing for small venues and friends and family. He loved going to concerts. We saw Bonnie Raitt, one of his favorites, in concert on June 7th in Durham.
His final job and service to us all was to become a Pesticide Inspector for NC State Department of Agriculture, a job he enjoyed for more than two years. He loved knowing that he was a keeper of the earth and preserving healthy soil for generations to come.
Sun graduated from the University of Georgia and is proud to share he was one of the final naked streakers in the early 70's on the campus. He had a passion for protesting the injustices he saw all around him, a path his mother, Trudye Lynn Wells, inspired in him. Even with Covid looming over us all, he attended several Black Lives Matter protests in the area.
Sun and Claire shared a love of Yellowstone National Park. We took many trips there in all seasons. It was on a winter trip we saw and heard the wolves howling on the ridges overlooking Lamar valley. This May we were blessed with a powerful Lunar Eclipse to begin our journey through the 150th year of the park with James. We were privileged to see five wolf pups playing with their mother at the mouth of their den, a site that is rare. There were many grizzlies off in the distance and mama bison nursing their calves. This epic trip was completed with playing with wolf pups at Howlers Inn, a favorite resting place where Claire often stayed. The memory of Sun holding a wolf pup is a treasure and a comfort.
Everywhere Sun went his warmth touched so many, in ways I cannot even express.
A memorial will be held for Sun Butler at Camp New Hope's Fleming Lodge – where we were married on April 11, 1998.
January 22, 2022 - 2-5 pm
Camp New Hope
4805 NC-86, Chapel Hill, NC 27516
Contact Claire for details at clairemariemiller1979@gmail.com
Donation suggestions that Sun would love to support are:
7 Directions of Service - www.7directionsofservice.com
Interfaith Food Shuttle in Raleigh NC - www.foodshuttle.org