Monticello • The last time Laura and Randy Butler saw their son Aaron Butler was in April.
The 27-year-old and his Utah Special Forces team were driving to Texas, their final stop before a six-month deployment to Afghanistan. The group popped in at the Butler family business here, Randy’s Auto, to say hello and meet their comrade’s parents.
“I promised them chocolate chip cookies if they would stop,” Laura Butler recalled Wednesday. ”I was so thrilled. We got to meet these men — the caliber of these young men? You feel it coming out of them.”
On Aug. 16, this same team of soldiers would be attacked by Islamic State fighters in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan. An explosion in a booby-trapped building injured 11 of them and killed Aaron Butler, a staff sergeant in Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group of the Utah National Guard.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Aaron Butler’s parents and his fiancee, Alexandria Seagroves, recalled a man who was driven and fearless in every facet of his life. He moved at “900 mph,” his father said. While he could be intense, his heart was tender, Seagroves added.
At Monticello High School, Aaron Butler was a four-time state wrestling champ who never showed fear or nerves before big matches, Randy Butler said. He joined the Utah National Guard before graduation.
On a drive from Monticello to Salt Lake City several years ago, Randy Butler asked his son where his intense passion for the military had come from. His curiosity was understandable: Though patriotic, the Butlers are not a military family. Each of Aaron Butler’s seven siblings had at one time or another tried to talk him out of joining the service, his parents said.
Aaron Butler replied that he wasn’t quite certain, but he had wanted to since first grade. ”I knew that this is what I wanted, and it hasn’t ever changed,” he told his father.
After a Mormon mission in Ghana, Aaron Butler would return to the Utah Guard, eventually joining the elite 19th Special Forces. The Afghanistan trip, slated to end in October, was his first combat deployment — and there was no sign that he was ready to leave the military soon, the family said.
Butler met Seagroves while he was stationed in North Carolina, and he spilled his life story to her on the first date. He took her by surprise when he proposed to her from Afghanistan recently over FaceTime, Seagroves said. She didn’t hesitate in saying yes.
“He was always so caring,” she said. “Not just to me, but my best friends, my family. He just had a huge heart, and everybody we were around knew it.”
Through tears, the parents said they have felt deep lows in the past week — but they have also been buoyed by support from friends and neighbors in Monticello, population 2,200, where Randy Butler said most people know each other. “A flood of people,” he said, has stopped in to the Butler‘s home, located just off Main Street, to check on them and offer condolences. American flags line their front lawn.
“I don‘t know myself how to describe it,” Laura Butler said. ”The pain comes in waves, and when it’s crashing, it’s hard to breathe. Then it subsides, and you can go on. But because of all the support we have felt, and the love that is there from our family, it’s going to be OK.”
Butler’s parents did not discuss additional details of the attack that killed their son, or U.S. policy in Afghanistan following President Donald Trump’s announcement last week that called for a troop increase in the country. However, they issued a statement earlier this week, saying their son would have been supportive of a strategy change if military leadership thought it would ”increase the efficiency of U.S. operations in Afghanistan.”
“Our loss is painful and agonizing, but it will be even worse for the nation if we don’t stand up and take steps to stop the spread of terrorism,” the statement said.
Aaron Butler’s body is scheduled to arrive at noon Thursday at Monticello Airport, with a funeral scheduled for Saturday.
Laura Butler noted that Thursday would have been her son Aaron’s 28th birthday.
“I cannot think of a more fitting thing to happen,” she said. ”We had an amazing 27 years with him, and we are so grateful for that.”