Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 27, 1994 TAG: 9410270056
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Butler Parachute Systems Inc., a designer and manufacturer of specialty escape systems, will move from California City, Calif., to Roanoke early next year, bringing with it 18 to 20 jobs to be filled.
The company's president, Manley Butler Jr., said this week he has purchased two buildings at 1816 Loudon Ave. N.W. The Shenandoah Robe Co. will remain on the site. The vacant portion will be renovated for the parachute company's operations.
Target date for the company's move is January, said Butler, who grew up in Roanoke and is the son of M. Caldwell Butler, a lawyer and former congressman.
The property was purchased from Littlefield, Adams & Co. for $165,000. Littlefield, Adams, a sportswear maker formerly based in Roanoke, was sold in 1991 to a Texas investor, who moved most of its operations to San Antonio.
Four employees will move here from California with the company, Butler said. He estimated that 18 to 20 people will be hired by the end of the first operating year. Training for parachute manufacture is "a tedious process," he said, so new workers will be hired gradually.
Production workers will earn $7 to $10 an hour, with some highly skilled people earning $12 hourly, Butler said.
He and other company executives "wanted to get out of California," he said, and he also wanted to live in a community with good schools for his children, M. Caldwell Butler III, 5, and Catherine, 4. He and his wife already have purchased a home in South Roanoke.
When the decision was made to leave California, Butler said, he chose Roanoke because he has friends and family here.
Once a parachute is ready to be shipped, he said, it doesn't matter how far the cargo must move, so company location is not a factor.
Phil Sparks, of the Roanoke office of economic development, worked with Butler in moving the business. He called the relocation "exciting" because parachutes are "really out of the ordinary." It was rewarding to have someone who grew up in Roanoke return "and bring a business with him," Sparks said.
Butler Parachute Systems specializes in the engineering and manufacture of parachutes and recovery systems. The latter includes rocket-deployed devices for recovery of aircraft, such as pilotless drones.
The company also provides recovery system design, consulting, manufacturing and testing services to government agencies, aerospace firms and other parachute companies.
"We are particularly adept at the rapid development of new parachute and recovery systems for unusual applications," a company brochure stated.
The company said it has the experience to design and manufacture a wide variety of parachutes and recovery system components and equipment ranging from small decelerators to solid cloth canopies up to 130 feet in diameter.
It does not manufacture or service parachutes for skydiving or large-scale "build to print" orders. Its specialty is unusual parachutes, such as those it has manufactured for space shuttle crews, the armed forces and such contractors as Hughes Aircraft Co. and Douglas Aircraft.
The company also has worked on two movies. For "Spies Like Us" in 1984, it designed a system to extract and recover a large steel crane on a 100-foot-diameter cargo chute. For "Air America" in 1990, it built a parachute system for aerial stunts.
In 1985 and 1986, Manley Butler worked extensively with Dick Rutan and Jenna Yeager on the design of emergency and survival equipment for their Voyager World Flight, the first nonstop unrefueled flight around the world.
Butler founded the company as The Swoop Shop in 1976 in Austin, Texas. It adopted its present name three years later.
He has a bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas and more than 20 years' experience in parachute system design and manufacture.
Butler also has worked with parachutes as a combat airman in the Navy and with the Naval Weapons Center at China Lake, Calif. He is a licensed private pilot and an experienced parachutist, with more than 1,200 jumps.
Butler is chairman of the Society of Automotive Engineers committee that has responsibility for performance standards of personnel parachute assemblies.
In the past he has served as chairman of the technical committee for the Parachute Industry Association and as a member of the Technical Committee on Aerodynamic Decelerators.
by CNB