I heard yesterday that we have lost a dear friend in the camping community. I met Lynn Butler soon after I moved back home to West Virginia. She was the ultimate girl camper. She owned Setzer’s RV in Huntington, WV and hosted Girl Camper College a couple of times. I was fortunate to get to camp with her once. And there was a story that went along with it.

Remember when I had the honor of traveling around with the R-Pod 196 and I camped all over West Virginia? Well, I was traveling for a couple of weeks with Janine…Camper-in-Chief of Girl Camper fame. We attended the big RV Show in Elkhart, Indiana then moved on to the RV Show in Pennsylvania where we picked up the R-Pod. 

When the Hershey Show was over, Janine and I drove down to our place here at Marshmallow Ranch and camped overnight before we headed to a camp out at Girl Camper College at Beech Fork State Park. If any of you have ever driven up the road to Beech Fork, you know it is narrow and twisty-turny. We were coming around a curve and there was a truck coming right at me in my lane. I scooched to the right and my right wheel dropped off the pavement. We moved on a little bit, but I could tell I definitely had a hitch in my get-along.

Lynn on TV in one of her commercials!

Lynn was driving with us and Janine was following with her camper. I finally found a driveway I could pull into and Lynn stopped with us. In her expert opinion, she wanted the trailer hauled back to the dealership to fix it. She called her service guy and he was there in a heartbeat. I drove on with Lynn and she put my up in her Riverside Retro so I could still camp out. I was so embarrassed because I hadn’t been towing the new R-Pod for ten minutes! 

Setzer’s RV was Lynn’s mom’s business. Lynn took over when her mom couldn’t do it anymore. And, now that Lynn is gone, her daughter is doing the same. Lynn was a force of nature. An excellent business woman. A good friend. A fabulous mother and grandmother. And avid Marshall fan. I wish I would have taken more opportunities to camp with her. But I will always remember her generosity and kindness.

Whenever I hear of a loss like this, it makes me pause and ask myself, “Am I doing all I can to be a good person and contribute to the world?” Lynn was four months younger than me. It’s sobering to lose your contemporaries and it seems to be happening more and more often these days. It makes you stop and take inventory. We don’t know when it’s our last day, and I know I have a ton more I want to accomplish. None of us are getting any younger.

🌷

”For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.“

1 Corinthians 13:12-13 NIV