Donald Butler Jr., Developmental Disabilities Institute staff member, dies at 29

For his profession, Wheatley Heights’ Donald E. Butler Jr. worked with developmentally disabled young adults. But for his entrepreneurship, he was a personal trainer, dabbled in the music business and curated the Curative Illusion line of apparel. He believed in his family, God and the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.

And he was only 29 when he died.

"Yeah, Junoo was into a lot of stuff," his friend and fraternity brother Jean Moise, of Manhattan, remembered, using the nickname by which Butler was known. "He was amazing, I'm not going to lie. He always tried to enlighten his friends and give us the best type of advice to keep pushing forward."

"He always thought about other people first," said his father, the Rev. Donald E. Butler Sr., also of Wheatley Heights, and pastor of the Community Baptist Church of Southampton. At the Celebration of Life service, "We found out more about him in death than we knew in life because he was always helping everyone else out," with attendees saying things such as, "He's the one that told us don't give up. He's the one that held us together. He's the one that pointed us to God."

His son’s motto, the father said, was "Win the day."

Butler Jr. was returning from homecoming weekend at his alma mater, Virginia State University, on the night of Oct. 15, driving alone, when his Mercedes-Benz E400 rear-ended a tractor trailer on the New Jersey Turnpike in Westampton Township. He was pronounced dead at the scene, a New Jersey State Police spokesperson said.

"I spoke to the detective," said his father. "He said it looked like he may have gotten distracted. And I said that possibly could be. He had spoken to my wife Monday, saying he was going to stay another day because he was tired. So we believe he was still tired but he was coming home because he had to go to work Wednesday" at the Adult Day Services division of Smithtown’s Developmental Disabilities Institute. "He had already taken Monday and Tuesday off."

Butler Jr., his father said, was born in Manhasset on Dec. 9, 1994. Police reports had erroneously given his age as 23 when he died. Raised in Wheatley Heights, he was the youngest of three children and the only son of Butler Sr. and Sylvia L. Sapp Butler. After graduating from Half Hollow Hills High School East in Dix Hills, where he played football and ran track and field, he attended the New Rochelle campus of Monroe College (now Monroe University), also running track there.

He later transferred to VSU, where he was a brother of Kappa Alpha Psi, his father’s fraternity, and graduated with a degree in criminal justice in December 2018.

"He was one of the brothers who was real prideful in bringing everybody together," said Moise. "He wanted all of us to be the best version of ourselves that we could possibly be. We could be partying and he's always going to come up with a story and a life lesson, and it was memorable."

One of his last major acts was to help his family win $41,000 on "Family Feud," his father said, in an episode that aired in February.

In addition to his parents, he is survived by two grandmothers, Vera Drayton and Ruby Sapp, both of Hempstead; and older sisters, Shanelle Butler and Sharelle Butler, both of Wheatley Heights.

Following a viewing and a service Oct. 26 at Union Baptist Church in Hempstead, he was buried at Greenfield Cemetery in Uniondale.

"He always said, ‘I want to be out of the house by the time I'm 30,’ " his father recalled. "Well, God gave him the desires of his heart because he's out of the house now, not with his earthly father, but he's with his heavenly Father."