The Daily ReflectorSUNDAY, January 26, 2020 reflector.com Home delivery price 50¢ | $1.50

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Today: 54, Partly SunnyTonight: 35, Partly Cloudy

Forecast on A2

Abby ............E2Classified .E1-6Crossword ...E3Look.........D1-4Nation ........ B1

Obituaries ... B3Opinion........A4Sports ......C1-6State...........B3World ......... B1

Pirates rout AAC foe Tulane

SPORTS, C1

Trump lawyers argue against

DemocratsNATION, B1

BY GINGER LIVINGSTON

Staff writer

Completing capital projects and pub-lic works that are underway while look-ing for growth opportunities is the chief goal the Greenville City Council set during its annual planning workshop.

The two-day event ended Saturday with staff reviewing $92.5 million in cap-ital projects that are scheduled to begin in the next five years along with dis-cussing its upcoming fiscal year 2020-21 budget.

“In the last two years we’ve laid out a very aggressive program of priorities,” City Manager Ann Wall said. “We did work on every single priority and proba-bly 90 percent of them are in progress or complete. Our staff really worked hard in the last two years to deliver those goals and priorities.”

There are still a lot of projects the city and its partnerships are working on, she said.

“I don’t think the goals need to be changed, we just need to refine them,” Mayor P.J. Connelly said.

The five modified goals the council settled on are:

■ Enhance community engagement,

BY NATHAN SUMMERS

Staff writer

On Super Bowl Sunday back in 1980, an 18-year-old kid from Greenville was seeing the Pacif-ic Ocean for the first time.

In fact, that was a big reason he wanted to visit California 40 years ago. That morning, he left Greenville bundled in his warm-est coat and corduroy pants that left him feeling silly as he stood basking in the warmth of the West Coast that January day.

Ron Butler’s status as one of the best three-sport athletes J.H. Rose High School ever saw had carried him across the country for the first time. Even though the kid gazing at the sea had already told the coaches at UCLA — then a top-ten national football powerhouse — that he was unlikely to become a Bruin, something happened out there to change Butler’s thinking and his life.

“I got there and I loved the environment. Loved it,” said Butler, now the athletics direc-tor for Pitt County Schools and director of Pitt County Commu-nity Schools and Recreation. “Bel Air. Hollywood. I loved the atmosphere.”

A few years later, Butler was a veteran on the UCLA team, earning letters in all four active seasons while routinely playing in college football’s greatest theaters, from the Big House in Michigan to the Horseshoe at Ohio State to the Rose Bowl and back to the L.A. Coliseum, where the Bruins were domi-nant. The team won consecu-tive Rose Bowls in 1982 and ‘83.

Butler started at both inside

Gridiron reflection

A three-sport great at J.H. Rose, Ron Butler took a trip to the West Coast that lured him from North Carolina to play for UCLA 40 years ago.

NATHAN SUMMERS/THE DAILY REFLECTOR

Butler last week holds the photo of himself from his football days.

CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS

Ron Butler, now the athletic director for Pitt County Schools and director of Pitt County Community, Schools and Recreation, is pictured during a football game during his playing days at UCLA in the early 1980s. Below on the left, Butler, 86, then a linebacker for UCLA pursues Stanford quarterback John Elway, 7.

FOOTBALL FINALE ■ The San Francisco 49ers will take on the Kansas City Chiefs at 6:30 p.m. on

Sunday in Super Bowl LIV. The game will be televised on the Fox network.

■ The 2020 Pro Bowl, the NFL’s all-star game for the 2019 season, is 3 p.m. today in Orlando, Florida, and will be televised nationally by ESPN.

Time as a Bruin helped shape schools’ AD

It must be a state secret.

Locals know the colorful history behind

The State Theatre in the heart of Greenville. Folks who have been around a while will forever know the area as “downtown,” like Petula Clark’s 1964 hit. It conjures memories of not only the old theater, but Globe Hardware, The Attic, and Diener’s Bakery. Today’s modern marketing moniker with positive spin is “Uptown.”

The State Theatre on Fifth Street, across from Five Points Plaza, is not just

physical-ly at the heart, but historically at the heart as well. I remember taking my children to movies at The Park Theater (as

it was then known) for $1 back in the early 90s. But the site’s storied past goes back much further than that, as a historic building constructed the year World War I began.

But it has been in a state of change. When word came out that the structure was being repurposed as a music venue, many in the community heaved a col-lective, “Yes!” And when the doors opened last year — it celebrated its opening on

Saturday — they responded with a resounding, “Final-ly!” as it seemed that due to construction delays, the project would never come to fruition.

I walked through the

Head downtown to discover a state of entertainment

THE DAILY REFLECTOR

Fans enjoy the Spare Change band at the State Theatre on Jan. 10.

ONLINE ■ Subscribers may visit this story on reflector.com to check out

Scene Around photo galleries from the Spare Change concert and Saturday’s anniversary show with Cosmic Charle.

■ For a schedule of upcoming shows at the State Theatre, visit their Facebook page or statetheatrenc.com.

DONNADAVIS

City plans for work totaling $92 million Staff told the Greenville City Council they have 75 percent of the funds needed during the five-year planning period.

SCOTT DAVIS/THE DAILY REFLECTOR

Greenville Mayor P.J. Connelly speaks during the Greenville City Council planning workshop Saturday morning.

See THEATER, A5

See COUNCIL, A5See BUTLER, A3