Owen Bradford Butler, one of the nation’s most prominent corporate leaders on education issues, died of cancer on April 21. He was 74.
The former chairman of the Procter & Gamble Co. chaired subcommittees in the mid-1980s for the New York City-based Committee for Economic Development, a business group that produced policy statements on investing in programs for children.
He was also a member of the Carnegie Task Force on Meeting the Needs of Young Children, which issued the 1994 report “Starting Point: Meeting the Needs of Our Youngest Children.” After moving to Denver in the 1990s, Mr. Butler co-chaired with Gov. Roy Romer Colorado’s Bright Beginnings initiative to improve children’s quality of life.
Mr. Butler urged business leaders, educators, and policymakers to look beyond traditional classroom boundaries and provide early and sustained intervention in the lives of children.
Yvonne A. Ewell, an 11-year member of the Dallas school board, died April 27. She was 71 and had been diagnosed earlier last month with pancreatic cancer.
Ms. Ewell began her career with the Dallas schools in 1954 as an elementary school teacher. She advanced to become a principal and an assistant superintendent, and when she became an associate superintendent in 1978, she was the first black person to hold such a high leadership position in the district.
A May 2 school board election was to have returned her to office for another three-year term; she was unopposed for her board seat. The board is to meet this week to decide how to fill the vacancy.
Flags in the 158,000-student school district were ordered to be flown at half-staff last week in Ms. Ewell’s honor.
