Irene Butterbaugh
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Irene Butterbaugh, who with her husband Tom was an early Project Liberty Ship volunteer, died November 7, 2006, at the age of 85.

Born Irene Martha Hussey in Baltimore, she was a 1939 graduate of Western High School and earned a bachelor's degree in Latin and Greek from Goucher College in 1943. After college graduation she took a job in Washington as a civilian employee of the Navy doing top-secret code work. Her assignment was to try to break U.S. weather codes in an effort to make them stronger and less vulnerable to being broken by the enemy. So sensitive was the nature of her work that she was unable to tell her father where she commuted each day.

After the war, Mrs. Butterbaugh went to work at what is now the Walters Art Museum as an assistant to the librarian and worked handling rare manuscripts and assisting researchers. She later established a very successful mail-order department for the museum's Gallery Publications. She was a member and former treasurer of the Museum Store Association, a national organization.

After retiring in 1978, Mrs. Butterbaugh was able to volunteer full time with her husband. The couple volunteered with Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland and at the B & O Railroad Museum in Ellicott City. The Butterbaughs later began volunteering on the steam tug BALTIMORE and still later with Project Liberty Ship. She was at Pier One the day the JOHN W. BROWN arrived in Baltimore in August 1988, busily selling hats, shirts and other memorabilia to maritime fans and the curious who had gathered to welcome the vessel. She went on to work in the ship's store but also helped with clerical work and kept the membership roster current until her health began to fail. No stranger to hard work, she also chipped rust and painted.

She is survived by her husband of 59 years, Thomas E. Butterbaugh, and by a niece.