Gale Butler

Butler has served as the face in the community for Fort Lauderdale's corporate giants: first Blockbuster and then AutoNation. Her tenure in community relations helped define an era. In the 1980s, while working for a bank, she started The Broward Roundtable, a forum for nonprofits to introduce themselves and their needs to funders. Her counsel encouraged Wayne Huizenga, the entrepreneur behind Blockbuster and AutoNation, to give $1 million of his corporate and personal funds to the African-American library alone. After earning an English degree from the University of Miami, she spent years based in Manhattan as a flight attendant for an overseas charter airline, a stint that involved trips to Vietnam and living months in Iran and weeks in Saudi Arabia. She met her first husband, actor Victor Morrow, on a stopover in West Berlin in Germany and lived for years in Beverly Hills, Calif., before their divorce. Then, she did public relations in Washington, D.C., before returning to Fort Lauderdale with husband Paul Butler, a sales executive, and their son Todd. In 1992, she accepted the community relations post at Blockbuster, the booming video-rental chain that she recalls at one point opened a store every 17 minutes. After Blockbuster was sold, Butler in 1997 moved to AutoNation, staying through 2013 and overseeing donations of millions of dollars per year nationwide. Her husband, Paul Butler, died in a plane crash in June 2004. Now 29, Todd Butler will receive an MBA in marketing in May from George Washington University and hopes to start his own sports-social networking business.