Pleased to Meet You

It’s safe to say that renowned photographer Clyde Butcher wouldn’t be where he is today without a fifth-generation Floridian named Oscar Thompson, who Butcher credits with introducing him to the Everglades.

"I probably would never be doing what I'm doing if I hadn't met Oscar,” said Clyde Butcher. "Oscar was absolutely most important to my whole venture. He got me actually into this water.”

Butcher met Thompson by chance in 1986. Thompson had a photography business in Ft. Myers at the time.

"I had a project and I needed to have a copy negative made,” Butcher recalls. "I went in there, and this guy was looking at these slides on his light table. I looked over his shoulder and I said, 'Is that the Amazon or where is that?’

Thompson told him that the photos were actually taken just down the street from where they were standing. He asked Thompson if he could take him there someday.

"He said, 'How about now?’ Butcher said.

What followed was life-changing for both men.

"I thought it was going to be like a swamp,” Butcher said. "It's going to be mud. When he first got off the path into the Everglades I said, "Oscar, this is like rock.’ He said, 'Yeah, it's shale. Most of the Everglades is shale. It's not mud.’"

Butcher was amazed at how Thompson could negotiate his way through the swamp.

“He could walk on top of the swamp where I sank into the swamp,” Butcher said. "I walked down into it, and he would just somehow walk on top of it. I was just so ticked off at him. My feet were about the same size, but I did weigh a lot more. I weighed probably 100 pounds more than he did.”

Thompson taught Butcher all about the alligators and snakes in the Everglades.

"He explained to me where the gators would be,” Butcher said, "and where the snakes would be and all that sort of thing. 'Be careful in these particular areas,’ he'd said, ‘Now if a gator attacks, you just jump on top of him.’”

According to Butcher, Thompson was an alligator poacher.

“He was poaching,” Butcher said. "There were a lot of gators. They were not too happy with him. There's one hole in Fakahatchee that he got 23 gators out of.”

Paul Westberry, a longtime Collier County Public Schools administrator, isn’t surprised by any gator-hunting stories about Thompson. The two attended Immokalee High School in the early 1960s, playing in the high school band together for two years. Westberry had moved to Immokalee from Gainesville as a sophomore and found the locals had a different idea of fun than they did in the shadows of the University of Florida. Westberry was president of his senior class and captain of the football team at Immokalee. Even as a teenager, Thompson preferred hanging out in the swamp.

“Probably the most interesting thing that I can relate about Oscar is that he basically comes from pioneer stock,” said Westberry. “His family goes back quite a ways in South Florida. He was in close alliance with the Seminoles. On Monday mornings, we had meetings in the parking lot at school. There was a sand parking lot right across from the office of the old high school. And most of the guys would be taking their last cigarette smoke before going in and talking about all the things that they did that weekend. Usually, it was gator hunting tales or about fights up in LaBelle. Everybody was hunting gator in those days. Oscar was kind of a quiet guy, very self-contained. A lot of boys in those days were given to braggadocio kind of stuff. They were talking about how tough they were and all the encounters they had with gators. And people would show their bites and their scars and stuff and talk about how they couldn't get this gator out of the hole or all the things they had to go through to get it out of the hole. Oscar never shared any of that stuff. He never talked at all about any of his private life. And he wasn't antisocial. But Oscar would never say anything at all to anybody about what he had done over the weekend.”

Thompson, who developed a reputation as an outstanding photographer, wasn’t especially keen about photography when he and Butcher met.

“Mostly he was using his gun camera,” Butcher jokes. “When he met me, he got rid of his gun."

Thompson passed in 2002 at the age of 55. Butcher still misses his friend.

"I was almost lost without having Oscar around,” Butcher said wistfully. "I mean, it was just so much fun - and very comfortable - going out with him."