Miriam Sara Butwin

Miriam Sara Butwin, 85, was born in St. Paul on September 10, 1936. She died on January 12, 2022. She was the oldest of the three children of Julius and Frances Butwin. Her parents were devoted to books, and Miriam maintained that devotion in her reading, her writing and her work with Lerner Publications, the University of Minnesota Press and at Barnes & Noble. In the 1940s, when Miriam was a child, Julius and Frances ran their own bookstore, called Bookhunters, near the University of Minnesota in Dinkytown. Her parents also translated the Yiddish fiction of Sholom Aleichem in several volumes, published in the late ‘40s and ‘50s. The book trade and the arts in general figured in every stage of Miriam’s life.
After attending Central High School in St. Paul where she served as Art Editor of the school newspaper, she continued her education in studio art and the humanities at the University of Minnesota where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. After graduation in 1958 she moved first to Washington, D.C. and then to New York City where she worked at the Whitney Museum of American Art and what was then the new Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue. She loved New York and has left a record of that love in her sketchbooks and in the splendid letters that she wrote at that time. In 1963 she returned to Minnesota, established herself in Southeast Minneapolis, and began her long association with the cultural and political life of that neighborhood. She worked at the Museum of Natural History on campus and then as an editor and author of books for young readers at Lerner Publications in Minneapolis. For the next seventeen years Miriam created publicity and press releases for the University of Minnesota Press during a period in the ‘70s and ‘80s that is regarded as a golden age at the Press. Former colleagues continue to praise her droll wit and her unfailing ability to produce elegant copy including accurate and insightful summaries of books on a broad variety of topics. For the final chapter of her working life, Miriam assumed the role once modeled for her by her parents when she became a valued advisor and sales associate at the Barnes & Noble on West Lake Street in Minneapolis.
Throughout her life Miriam dedicated herself to the pursuit of knowledge, through extensive reading, additional study, and travel in Europe and America. She brought her fine eye to museums and galleries and to the art and architecture of daily life and was never without a sketchbook. She was able to frame her knowledge within an historical perspective, always in keeping with her lifelong commitment to social justice, racial equity and women’s rights. She maintained that commitment as a valuable voice in the local Democratic Party, in letters to the editor, and as an intrepid participant in Peace Vigils, in all weather, on the Lake Street Bridge.
Of equal importance to the cultivation of her own education was the generous attention she gave to her younger brothers, David and Joseph, as they were growing up. Both siblings would carry on the literary traditions of their family, David as a journalist, travel writer and author, and Joseph as a professor of English, now emeritus, at the University of Washington in Seattle. Following an enduring family tradition of abundant correspondence and conversation, Miriam maintained close ties with her family despite the geographic distances that often separated them. David and his wife Pamela live in Leonia, NJ, near their daughter, Kate Butwin, of Brooklyn, NY. Joseph and his wife Ann live in Seattle, WA, near Joe’s son, Julien Butwin.
Family and friends, along with her devotion to a series of darling cats and a love of music accompanied Miriam to her final days. In view of Covid precautions no memorial service is planned at this time. Contributions in her honor may be made to Minnesota Public Radio or to the Sholom Foundation/Sholom West Campus where she spent the past two years living in safety and contentment.