Trial by Fire : Strengthened Butkuses Celebrate Christmas at Home That Survived Disastrous Blazes

For this special Christmas, there had to be a special Christmas tree for Dick and Helen Butkus.

It’s the top of a tall pine, sent by an Oregon friend. Merrily decorated, it’s a 12-footer, standing in the foyer of their Malibu home. The poinsettias are in the living room, and there are mantelpiece carolers. A huge wreath hangs in the kitchen.

For Dick, the former all-pro linebacker with the Chicago Bears, and Helen, sons Ricky and Matt, and daughter Nikki, this is a Christmas they expected to celebrate in an apartment, or a rented home. Maybe even a hotel.

On Nov. 3, their hillside home was buffeted by wind-driven flying embers and blowing ash. Only 100 yards away, other homes burned to the ground.

But through the pluck of a neighbor, Tom Loo, and a dozen workmen, the Butkus home survived the Calabasas-Malibu fire, which destroyed 350 homes.

To Matt Butkus, a 22-year-old USC football player, the meaning of Christmas ’93 is vivid.

“It was a terrible time for us, but even worse for people who lived near us,” he said.

“Other houses burned to the ground. Ours didn’t. We have a house to decorate for Christmas. The whole experience strengthened our family.”

On the morning of Tuesday, Nov. 2, Matt Butkus had the news on in his USC apartment, as he prepared to go to class.

His attention was directed to the TV when he heard the first bulletin about a fire in Calabasas, rapidly blowing toward Malibu.

“My mom called me, she was home alone,” Matt said. “Dad was in Chicago on business. It was definitely something to worry about. Our house is all wood, a matchbox. So I watched the news.

“I went over to school and told Coach (John) Robinson about it, and he told me to forget about practice that afternoon.”

Shortly afterward, a police car on the Butkus’ street pulled into driveways, and an officer announced through a megaphone that residents had to evacuate.

“He emphasized now in his announcement,” Helen Butkus recalled laughing.

“I looked around, and wondered what to take. So I grabbed Dick’s Hall of Fame bust, the computer disc with all his business stuff on it and our three dogs. That’s all I took.”

Meanwhile, Dick Butkus, in Chicago filming a commercial--he’s also the Bears’ TV announcer for WGN--quickly got on a Los Angeles-bound flight.

“I was pessimistic, based on what I’d seen on TV and calls home,” he said.

“There were a lot of people on the plane with homes in the fire areas. I sat there, wondering if I should rebuild in L.A., or move back to Chicago. . . .

“When I landed, I knew the roads were closed in Malibu, so I met my wife at our friends’ house, Dick and Carol Petersen, in Westwood.

“On Wednesday, our son-in-law, Francis Parish, got into Malibu on a bike, found that the house was OK, and called us right away on a cellular.”

The Butkus’ hero is their neighbor, Loo, an attorney. Loo didn’t evacuate when ordered to do so. Instead, he brought in a dozen workers and found shovels for all of them.

The Butkus neighborhood is on well water. When the electricity went out, so did everyone’s water pumps. So armed only with shovels, the men went to work.

“They scattered out, shoveling dirt on everything that began to burn,” Helen Butkus said. “They were marvelous, every one of them. When it was all over, we threw a big party for them and paid them.”

Dick, Matt and Ricky Butkus walked miles the next day--the roads were still closed to cars--to the house.

Said Matt: “The grill cover over the barbecue was singed, the bottom of the garage door was a little charred where the wind was blowing ash under it, and the satellite dish melted.

“The only other thing that burned was the wood post that holds up our mailbox.”

On Thursday night, for the Freedom Bowl game at Anaheim Stadium, Matt Butkus will suit up for the final time at USC.

If form holds, he won’t play.

When he played against Houston in September, it was the first game appearance in his five-year USC career.

Five years ago, recruiters swarmed Butkus, who was an all-Southern Section lineman at Loyola High. Butkus, now 6 feet 2 and 265 pounds, seemed like a can’t-miss prospect then.

“Matt was a great high school player,” said Jeff Kearin, one of his high school coaches and now a USC assistant.

“When (former USC coach) Larry Smith recruited him, he saw Matt as a guy who could dominate centers and free up the linebackers. But at the major-college level, Matt was just a hair slower and a hair smaller than he needed to be.

“All the (USC) coaches have a lot of respect for Matt’s enthusiasm, his attitude, for a fifth year senior who doesn’t play much. At this level, when you don’t play, it’s hard to get up for the games, but he does.”

Butkus says he has no regrets about having gone to USC, rather than a school where he might have played more.

“I’m very comfortable with who I am. I plan to live here the rest of my life, and a USC degree will have a longer life for me than football.

“Besides, I may not have played much, but I’ve contributed. I know a lot about football, and I’ve helped other guys. Guys like Thomas Holland (defensive tackle) will ask me to watch them, and suggest things.”

Suggest some “hand-me-downs,” for example.

“Dad taught me that the best way to go after a quarterback is to remain upright as you go in, with a hand up, and tackle him high,” he said.

“That way you have a better chance of tipping a pass, by tackling him high.”

Surely, this is a coach in the making.

“I think Matt would be a good coach,” Dick said.

“He’s football smart. He’s helped other players. But I think he wants to be a movie star instead.

“I’m very proud of Matt. He worked very hard at football in any way he could. And he loves the game.”

Matt said he has considered coaching, along with playing pro football in Europe, and taking some USC film and drama classes.

Helen Butkus said the hardest part of her husband’s life during his son’s football career was going to his games. Turns out he was a much better player than a spectator.

“Sometimes people will surround Dick at a football game, asking for autographs and taking pictures, and he just hates that,” she said.

“And at an SC game last year, he got so upset at the SC coaches that he got up and left at halftime.”

Matt, 22, is the youngest of three Butkus children. He was 2 when his father retired from the NFL.

Older brother Ricky, 26, played rugby at St. Mary’s and is now a camera operator in the film industry. Sister Nikki, 27, has degrees from UCLA and Notre Dame and is an architect.

Always, Matt Butkus says, Dick Butkus was his father, not a coach.

“He never got involved in that, he never gave me any football advice unless I asked for it,” he said.

“People assume Dad forced me into football, and nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, he wanted all three of us to participate in as many sports as possible.

“One time he said to me, ‘Look, if you decide you want to quit playing football and become an artist or something, don’t worry about me. Just do it.’ ”

Matt describes his father as happiest at home.

“Dad has to travel to Chicago a lot and he doesn’t like it,” he said.

(Dick Butkus was in an Arkansas motel during a shoot for a duck-hunting program for an outdoors TV show he hosts when he was interviewed for this story.)

“When he’s home with his family, that’s when he’s happiest.

“The way people remember him as a player, that’s not at all the way he is. He’s not a social guy at all. He just likes staying home.”

And the recognition attached to his pro football career is a fact of life he could do without, his son says. “In our house, the only indication you’d find that he played in the NFL is his Hall of Fame bust,” Matt said. “There’s no jerseys on the wall, stuff like that. When we lived in Florida, all his trophies and stuff were packed up in a box that was in a barn and he never unpacked it.

“There’s no video collection, either. All I’ve learned about what kind of player Dad was is by watching Steve Sabol films on ESPN, and what people have told me.”

Matt Butkus was asked to describe the angriest he has seen his father.

“Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “It was the time I cracked up his Blazer in the Santa Monica Mountains when I took it off-roading.”

It happened when Matt was in high school, and his parents were at Notre Dame, attending a parents’ day function with Nikki.

Matt was not hurt when his father’s vehicle tipped over and young Butkus leaped out.

Recalls Helen: “Father Theodore Hesburgh was president of Notre Dame then, and he found us and told us Matt had been in an accident.

“Dick was terrified that Matt had been hurt. But when he learned he hadn’t been hurt, then he got very angry. He wanted to go home immediately, but I went home first.”

Recalls Fred Richman, family friend and attorney: “Helen called me from Notre Dame, and told me Dick was on his way home to kill him.

“So I called Dick and asked him what he was going to do, and he said, ‘I’m going home and kill him.’

“I said, ‘Dick, I’ve talked to Matt and he’s already suffered terribly over this. Let’s let this lie.’

“Matt was very upset, of course. I’ll never forget him asking me, before his dad got home: ‘What do you think will happen to me?’ ”

Richman said Dick was calm when he arrived home . . . but became very agitated again, when Matt showed him the wrecked vehicle.

When asked to recall the story recently, Dick Butkus laughed.

“It could have been worse,” he said. “He could have taken the Corvette that day.”