In 1948, my grandfather Harry King (1886-1971) purchased a Willis CJ-2A Jeep, and it has now been in the family for 76 years, still being used by the fifth generation. Following is the saga as told by my brother, Jack Butt:

Chapter 1

This weekend I spend some time teaching Cecilia (18) and Harlan (15) Butt how to drive the family 1948 Willys Jeep. They are thus the fifth generation of Kings/Butts behind the steering wheel of this iconic heirloom. For someone who has never driven a standard transmission, the jeep without any synchromesh shifting, is an exciting challenge, as many of us know.  In a 10-acre vacant parking lot, They mastered shifting,  steering, braking, 1st and 2nd gear and overdrive – they are many hours away from highway safe, but it made for an interesting and fun afternoon for all.

Figure 1 - Jack Butt (right) teaching Harlan Butt (left) to drive the family jeep, 2024

Cecilia and Harlan had only the scantest knowledge of this family heirloom and its storied history, so I gave them the history of how World War II compelled the invention of a 4 wheel drive vehicle for light reconnaissance and infantry support, to replace horses on the battlefield, it’s fame and popularity  surviving the war from newsreels and the millions of soldiers who had used them and being converted to the first broadly produced civilian model in 1946, the Willys CJ (civilian jeep) 2A.

At that time, in 1945, there was no such thing (other than military vehicles) as 4-wheel drive, or all-wheel drive, much less Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV’s)  in America; the Willys CJ2A was the harbinger of all of that with its rugged, go-anywhere nature, and drew attention wherever it was driven.

Giving Harlan’s and Cecilia’s dad, Andrew, a scant report of this, he asked if I had any historical pictures of the jeep and here they are.

The jeep is a 1948 model, with only minor design differences from its military predecessor. Why in the world my grandfather, Harry King, a college dean in Batesville,  Arkansas, with a Ph.D. in biblical studies, his children grown with their own babies,  was in the vanguard of buying such a thing in 1948, is beyond my knowledge.  I recall it being told that he didn’t buy it new, but just sightly used – either a showroom model, or quick trade in.

The earliest pictures attached are two of Tom Butt at age 6, and younger brother Martin, at age 3, about 1950 with their grandfather, Harry King, in Batesville.  I would have been a newborn, or on the way, and obviously have no memory of this picture, but this is the jeep as I remember it from earliest memories.  This would have been only two years after Harry bought the Willys; it was originally a dark blue with red wheels, and a heavy, brown ,  canvas top.  From the looks of it, he didn’t keep it in spit and polish condition. You’ll also note the step suspended below the front seat to help get in and out  -  those were torn off from rough use by us in subsequent years.  My brothers and I have very fond memories of the jeep from early childhood – with Harry (we called him Ha-ha) driving, we rode to town to run errands and get treats, and drove with our grandfather into the nearby country to fish or explore the Cushman Cave with its Indian relics.

Figure 2 - Harry King with Tom Butt (6 years) and Martin Butt (3 years) in Batesville, AR, 1952

 
Figure 3 - Harry King with Tom Butt (6 years) and Martin Butt (3 years) in Batesville, AR 1952


Figure 4 - Tom K. Butt (10) and cousin Helen Reid (7) in jeep in 1954, Batesville, AR

The jeep lived in a simple, frame garage, detached from our grandparents’ house, and one of our entertaining distractions as young kids, in those days before TV, computers, etc. was to sit in the jeep and pretend driving,  push all the pedals and shift all the sticks, turn the steering wheel and  beep the horn, which without the key in it was deemed harmless by our parents.
Grandfather King kept the jeep until 1964, when in his 80’s, he had a collision in it – nobody injured nor much property damaged, but it upset him enough that he said he wasn’t going to drive it again, and I remember him signing the title of it over to my father, Tom Butt, and he, my brother Martin (who was then at 17 of driving age), and I as a non-driver, drove it the 200 miles back to Fayetteville, where it lived parked in front of our house at 26 West Davidson from 1964 to 1969.

The canvas top wore out, my Dad ordered a new, white canvas top for it.  He also put a heater in it, which never worked very well; the canvas top was far from airtight and it was cold in the winter, and wet in the rain.  In 1964 I was 14 and learned to drive on the jeep.

Brother Martin was 17, a junior in high school, and it was his only “wheels” for getting to/from school and social life; and Tom was 20 and  a junior at the U of A, and likewise, it was his only wheels for his mobile activities, so there was competition for the use of the jeep. By the time I was 16 and could drive by myself, Martin was a freshman and Tom was a senior at the U of A, and all 3 of us were using the jeep as our primary vehicle.  Money being scarce among us, and gas costing money, whenever we had our turn with the jeep we would put only enough gas in it to serve our purpose at the time, maybe a gallon, at most two,  none of us wanting to fund our brothers’ transportation.

At some point in there, the engine seized up, and it was towed to garage of our family mechanic, Richard Mayes.  He asked our Dad when the last time the gas tank was filled up. Daddy didn’t know, but inquired of us, to find out it probably had not had over 2 gallons of gas in it for over a year.  The result was that the top of the tank had rusted out and the rust had clogged the fuel lines.   Penny wise and pound foolish.

I will not recount the many, varied, and foolish adventures we all had, being of an age when we thought we were bulletproof and driving the hero vehicle of World War II combat adventures, we and the friends we took with us each used more lives than a cat seeing just exactly what the jeep could do.

By the time I was 17, Martin had joined the Marines and was on his way to Vietnam, Tom had graduated U of A, commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army and was also doing Army duty and I found myself as a high school junior in the luxurious position of sole custodian and user of the jeep. By this time, abuse by the 3 young brothers had left it sorely scraped, dented, banged up and wore out looking, so I undertook to do most of the sanding and body work to prep it for a local paint shop (Sines Body shop) to paint it bright yellow (“chrome yellow”) with a medium blue interior, making me in the newly painted jeep the finest tiger in the jungle. I drove it to and from school, dated my high school steady girlfriend in it, and took it on frequent trips to hunt and fish in the nearby countryside.  My second year on the staff at Boy Scout Camp Orr in the Buffalo River in 1966,at 16 I took it and my canoe to camp, being fully mobile in that wilderness for the summer.  But driving the jeep 70 highway miles there was a chore; they are really not made for long distance highway travel.  Attached is a picture of the jeep, just painted yellow from blue, piled with high school buddies, leading the 1967 Fayetteville High School homecoming parade, pulling the Senior Class Float.

Chapter 2

I dug around after sending yesterday’s missive and found a couple of pictures I should have included in the initial send, which are attached. One is my cousin Helen as a girl sitting in the jeep, with a boy in the driver’s side. It  is labeled “cousins Helen Reid and Tom K. Butt, Batesville circa 1954.” That is certainly Helen; she was born in 1947, so if the caption is right, she would have been 7 and Tom 10.    We only had two cousins on that side of the family, the children of my mother’s sister, Carol King Reid: Helen who was 3 years older than me and my brother Martin’s age; and Charlie, who was 6 years older and my brother Tom’s age. We didn’t visit Batesville a lot - maybe a couple of times a year, and as often as not, the Reid’s (who lived in Bartlett, a suburb of Memphis, TN) would be there, and the gang in the jeep would be some or all of the Butt boys and one or both of Helen and Charlie. This picture gives a pretty good view of the overall jeep when it was only 6 years old.

As noted, the Jeep moved to Fayetteville in 1964, the original brown canvas top wore out and was replaced with white.  I don’t remember that my Grandfather King ever took the top off the jeep while he had it, though he would zip out the rear panel so we could climb in and out of the back seat over the back bumper. However, once we boys had it, we discovered it was much cooler (in several ways) to drive it without the canvas top, so we kept the top off a fair amount of the time – it was about an  hour-long pain in the rear chore to put it on or take it off, and the doors could be taken off while the top was on, and it was often driven like that. 

Cars in the 1950’s , including the Jeep,  had no seat belts,  nor roll bars. Because we’d never heard of such, we didn’t realize how crazy that might sound in future years, nor how vulnerable we were driving it.  I once took a very sudden turn on the street, with my high school girl friend in the passenger seat, who was not anticipating that it would fling her out of the seat onto the pavement.  Fortunately for everyone, I wasn’t going that fast and she ended up with only skinned elbows and hurt pride, and I ended up with a good chewing out (well-deserved) from her parents.

The Jeep was in Fayetteville for about 3 years in its original blue paint, before I painted it yellow in 1967 or 1968.  The second picture attached is the Jeep, in Fayetteville about 1966, still blue,  without the top, with a couple of my high school buddies and me – I am still friends with them, Jack Young lives in Palm Springs, CA and Morris Cowan lives in Atlanta, GA. Jack’s mother thought the Jeep was “really cute” and insisted on taking this picture as  we were pulling out of her driveway.  I didn’t know about the picture until Jack delivered it to me from his mother’s possessions after she died in the last several years, about 50 years after the picture was taken. Mrs. Young obviously did not have a great camera.

Figure 5 – Jack Butt, Jack Young and Morris Cown, 1968


Figure 6 - Fayetteville High School Homecoming parade 1967

A favorite recreation in my high school days was the nearby Beaver Lake where people would go to boat and waterski.  My parents were not “lake people” nor did they have any lake craft, but several of my friends’ parents had power boats which they would let their kids take to the lake – if they had a vehicle that could tow them. Among all of such friends, I was the only one, with the jeep’s trailer hitch, who had that capacity. Which resulted on several occasions in me and 3 or 4 other passengers, all un-seat belted in the jeep, towing a boat and trailer that weighed more than a jeep, over 25 miles of highway.  Nobody suggested this was insanely dangerous, and while I had to put the jeep into its ultra-low “granny gear” to pull at 5 miles per hour the boats up some of the hills, and likewise gear down and stand on the brakes to avoid being pushed beyond control down the steep hills, we just presumed that was within the little Goliath’s capacity. After all, it had whipped the Nazis and the Japanese, hadn’t it?

When I graduated high school in 1968, I headed immediately off to Glacier National Park in Montana for a summer job, and at summer’s end, with only a few days turnaround in Fayetteville,   was on to Charlottesville Virginia, to start college at the University of Virigina, which didn’t allow freshmen to have cars. In the meantime, Martin had returned from the Marines/Vietnam, enrolled at the U. of A., and took custody of the jeep in Fayetteville as his primary car.  For extra money he had a newspaper delivery route which he ran in the jeep, tossing the papers left and right out of the open top jeep – I know this because he took me along for a delivery trip one afternoon. In short order he met, became engaged to, and in December 1968 married Nancy Stair from Rogers Arkansas and they set up housekeeping in a Fayetteville rent house. After my freshman year at college, I was again only a few days passing through Fayetteville on my way back to work in Glacier for a second summer.  Martin and Nancy had themselves taken a summer job in the Rocky Mountain west for the summer as backcountry rangers. For some reason that didn’t work out, they left the job mid-summer and visited me as they came through Glacier on their way back to Arkansas.  That was, I think, the last time I saw Martin; I flew directly back to Virginia for school at summer’s end, and mid-fall received a Sunday morning call at the fraternity house from Daddy that Martin had just died in a car accident (not involving the jeep). I am still reluctant to answer a ringing phone from the PTSD of that experience.

With Martin gone, the jeep moved to my parents’ house in Fayetteville, where it lived in the carport of their house on Rebecca Street from the fall of 1969 until 1971.  Daddy drove it occasionally, as would Tom and I on our seldom visits home.

I was without wheels at college my sophomore and junior years 1969-1971 as the jeep lay mostly dormant in Fayetteville.  However, I found and leased, for my senior year, somewhat of a faded glory estate house just outside of Charlottesville, on about 40 acres along the Rivanna River, at the foot of Monticello, the mountain on which is located Thomas Jefferson’s home of the same name.  “Riverbend”  had 6 bedrooms, along with a basement and maid’s quarters which we converted to 2 more bedrooms, and 10 of us moved in.  Not only did we have to furnish this large home, but there was a place for a Jeep to stay and be driven.  I rented a U-Haul truck in Fayetteville in August of my senior year, loaded it with all of the attic- and basement-stored castoff furniture that my parents had hoarded over the years, drove the jeep aboard, and drove it 24 hours straight-through to Charlottesville, sleeping at roadside pullovers because I couldn’t afford a motel room.

Figure 7 - On the way to a UVA football game, 1971


Figure 8 - Cutting wood at Riverbend

My fraternity brothers were impressed that I had a jeep – which fit perfectly with the hillbilly persona my east coast, prep school, city boy, fraternity brothers had imbued me with.   It was about 4 miles to the campus and I commuted daily in the jeep to classes – usually with Riverbend passengers aboard, swapping out good weather rides in the Jeep, for bad weather rides with them in their conventional cars. Attached are two, pretty poor pictures of that year – one of me hauling a gang of friends and dates to a football game, and the other of four “Riverbenders” cutting firewood on the estate to haul in the jeep back to the house to fuel its two wood burning fireplaces.