State AMVETS award comes to NFM
Kevin Butwill has devoted the last seven years of his life to helping veterans in North Fort Myers through his work with AMVETS, a fraternal organization devoted to those who served our country.
That devotion was honored when Butwill was named AMVET of the Year for the entire state of Florida.
Butwill, the current past commander and provost marshall, one of the six board members with AMVETS statewide, was named from more than 17,000 AMVETS members throughout the state.
On Saturday, Butwill was officially given the award at the AMVETS facility in North Fort Myers, with state dignitaries from AMVETS as well as board members of the North Fort Myers Civic Association.
“I was honored by it. I was also surprised. I was in the position as commander and I may have been more outspoken because of that position,” Butwill said. “We have an honor guard that goes everywhere. They are at the conventions and that helped us a lot.”
Butwill was nominated by a past commander (he doesn’t know who it was exactly), and was chosen by a group of past state commanders.
“This was picked last February and we usually have a June banquet for the winner of this award, but because of the pandemic it was cancelled,” Butwill said. “We decided to award it by District 6, which is from Englewood to Naples.”
Butwill started his association with AMVETS seven years ago when he still lived in Rhode Island before transferring to North Fort Myers to be with family and friends.
Butwill said AMVETS Post 81 is more than just a canteen. They provide resources to services for veterans such as mental health and referrals to the VA hospital in Cape Coral when they’re in crisis.
“We do a lot of outreach for veterans. We look for housing for them, a lot of referrals to the local United Way. Last year we were able to find homes for veterans here in North Fort Myers,” Butwill said.
Since COVID-19 hit, the post had been closed until recently. Butwill was focused on getting current members to renew their memberships in August, which he said many of them did.
It also impacted fundraising for the new building AMVETS will build.
“We haven’t put much money into our building fund, which we raised quite a bit for in the past few years,” Butwill said. “We paid off an $80,000 mortgage four years ago and we seem to have our finances in order, but the past eight months, not much has gone into the building fund.”
Butwill said he isn’t used to the attention he has gotten from receiving the award, crediting the veterans for making the award possible.
“It’s about the veterans. We promote our veterans and all the services we have at Post 81. There are a lot of people there doing the same thing I’m doing, such as cooking meals. We have a lot of volunteers there every day,” Butwill said.
AMVETS Post 81 is at 1910 N. Tamiami Trail. For more information, call 995-1001 or go to amvetspost81.org.