Distinguished journalist and long-time Bangkok resident David Butler died unexpectedly on Tuesday afternoon in a Thonburi hospital following a three-month illness.

An alumnus of Dartmouth College (class of 1963) in the US , Butler was born in Wakefield , Massachusetts , in 1941. During Playboy's heyday in the 1960s, he worked in Chicago as the magazine's features editor, and commissioned such notable contributors as Hunter S. Thompson during the eight years he appeared on the masthead. Butler went on to spend two years as a writer and editor at Newsweek, and covered the final years of the Vietnam War. He may be best remembered as the author of The Fall of Saigon, a highly regarded account published in 1985 of the final days of the American war in Indochina . The book was considered on and off for the basis of a mini-series or film.

In the 1980s and 1990s, during the FCCT's years atop The Dusit Thani, Butler was a regular fixture in the clubhouse and a valued friend to many. He served the club as a board member, and in 1987 as one of the assistant editors of the first edition of The King of Thailand in World Focus.

"I admired him greatly," recalls Denis Gray , former bureau chief of The Associated Press in Bangkok . "He was one of the best writers around and his book on the fall of Saigon is superb. I am only sorry he did not write his novel or screenplay."

Butler credited Alcoholics Anonymous with helping him arrest a serious drinking problem in the year 2000, a time of great difficulty and personal fortitude. He subsequently became a social recluse while working at The Nation.

Butler is survived by his beloved Thai friend Niwech Sudta; his brothers Michael (Dartmouth, class of 1961) and his wife Ann, of Oakland, CA; Paul and his wife, Janet, of Dover, NH; his sister Elizabeth, and her husband, Jim Grumbach of Wayland, MA; and several nieces and nephews.

A funeral service will be held at 4 pm, Saturday 14 January at Wat Tha Kham, on the Rama II Road in Thonburi (across from Central Rama II).

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