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Archibald Butt was the military aide to both Presidents
Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.
Butt and his housemate (some say lover), the painter Francis Davis
Millet, died during the sinking of the Titanic
on April 15, 1912. Butt was universally
recognized for his heroic conduct during the tragedy. His body was never
recovered. President Taft who had come
to regard Major Butt, “as a son or a brother”, praised him as a Christian gentleman and the perfect soldier. Taft wrote, “I
knew that he would certainly remain on the ship's deck until every duty had
been performed and every sacrifice made that properly fell on one charged, as
he would feel himself charged, with responsibility for the rescue of others.” At a May 5 ceremony, Taft broke down
weeping, bringing his eulogy to an abrupt end.
As the Titanic sank, the crew prepared the
lifeboats and Major Butt helped in the rescue efforts. One survivor described him as calm and
collected, “Major Butt helped…frightened people so wonderfully, tenderly, and
yet with such cool and manly firmness.
He was a soldier to the last.” A
cenotaph was erected in the summer of 1913 by his brothers in Section 3 of
Arlington National Cemetery at a point that Major Butt had previously selected
as his gravesite. The Butt-Millet Memorial Fountain, a
private memorial fountain, located in the President’s Park, adjacent to the
White House, was dedicated in October 1913.
Powerful friends argued that Butt (who was an aide to the president) and
Millet (who was vice chair of the United States
Commission of Fine Arts
at the time of his death) were both public servants who deserved to be
memorialized separately from private citizens who died in the Titanic disaster.
Major Archibald Butt
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