By Andy Lohman

Richie Butler's infectious laughter filled the room. In the lounge of the suites at Moody Coliseum, where SMU men's basketball was about to take on Tulane, Butler could barely keep up with all the friends, family, colleagues, former teammates and SMU lettermen coming up to shake his hand and congratulate him.

Butler was about to be honored with the 2018 Silver Anniversary Mustang Award, given annually to a former letterwinner who has not been an undergraduate student at SMU for at least 25 years that has brought honor to SMU, made contributions that have lasting and positive effects on their fellow citizens, and has been a model citizen in their community.

"First of all, it means that I'm getting old," Butler said, laughing, when asked about what the award meant to him. "Seriously, it is an honor because it recognizes not just athletic success but also, really more importantly, what one is doing in the community."

Butler is a leader in the Dallas community in both faith and business. He was the founding senior pastor of Union Cathedral in 2002, which in 2014 he merged with St. Paul United Methodist Church in downtown Dallas, where he currently serves as the senior pastor. Butler has also helped spark millions of dollars of real estate investment in the area as a private equity real estate fund manager with Prescott Group.

The East Austin, Texas, product played football on the Hilltop from 1989-93, where he racked up 167 tackles and four interceptions in his career, and graduated with a degree in theology. After completing grad school at Harvard, he worked for John Kerry, then the U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. Butler was preparing to move to Washington, D.C. to work in politics when his wife, Neisha, who he met at SMU, got a job offer back in Dallas.

The deal was that if Butler moved back to Dallas with his wife and didn't like it after two years, the couple would move elsewhere. That was back in 1998; the Butlers have been in Dallas ever since.

In every step along Butler's journey, from football to politics to pastoring to real estate, a central theme has emerged: unity.

The first real estate project Butler worked on was Unity Estates, a planned community sponsored by the African American Pastor's Coalition, which featured 285 single-family homes in the southern sector of Dallas, an area that had not experienced any new development in over 20 years.

"It actually brought the passion and interest for real estate to an area that hadn't experienced new development," Butler said. "That project launched multiple other real estate projects…so I think that housing development helped to create the regional retail in that area as well. I take pride in driving by Unity Estates and saying we developed that and the difference it made."

Even before he moved to Dallas, Butler interned for the republican District Attorney while he was at Harvard before working for the democratic Kerry.

"I believe in bipartisanship!" Butler says.

After the events in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, where riots ensued after a grand jury decided not to indict a police officer who had shot and killed an unarmed teenager suspected of theft, Butler held a community forum at his church.

"I had the chief of police, the D.A. [District Attorney] and the sheriff all at our church, but what I noted was a whole lot of anger, resentment, mistrust, just every negative emotion was operating in our church on that day," Butler said. "And that's where God inspired me to launch Project Unity to really focus on how we bridge divides. I sort of took a step back and realized that my whole life trajectory to some level has been around unifying and unity."

As tip-off neared, even more old friends came up to shake Butler's hand and exchange words of congratulations. When his answers to interview questions weren't being interrupted with outpourings of love and support, it was easy to see how Butler was meant to be a pastor. He speaks in a way that keeps you engaged, using his hands to subtly emphasize his points.

He's also full of pearls of wisdom.

"Figure out what is the priority today, or the next couple years, and focus on that," Butler said. "You may have all this other stuff you want to do, and you don't want to be good, you want to be great, and great requires a level of dedication and focus on a set of priorities."

"The last thing is to find your passion, which I think leads to purpose," Butler said. "I think money, success and all those things will follow. But to chase after success, you have it in the wrong order. Success comes when we figure out what purpose and passion is for us."

Butler looks back on his time at SMU fondly, knowing the relationships he built and knowledge he gained helped set him up for success later in life.

"The school really put me on a trajectory because I grew up in East Austin, and I think we are a product of our environment. We can go as far as what we know, and SMU enlarged my territory," Butler said. "I got to see things and get exposed to things that I would never have been exposed to otherwise."

Of course, some football memories stand out as well.

"I started preaching in college, so everybody called me The Reverend and I never cursed," Butler said. "And at one practice I went for an interception and missed it and I said s**t and it was like a hush came over the practice field. Cash Birdwell was our trainer, he runs out and yells 'Get some soap! Get some soap!' So that's a fond memory, because I'm human; it was laughable."

Over 20 years after he returned to Dallas, Butler continues to make an impact on the community, but isn't ready to rest on his laurels.

"There is important, hard work that I think we've accomplished," Butler said. "But a lot more work to be accomplished to be able to build relationships and collaborate with others to make an ongoing impact and difference in Dallas."