Paula Butterfield
Long before the University of Charleston began planning its School of Pharmacy, Morris Harvey alumna Paula Butterfield was making plans to be a pharmacist.
“I was pretty sure that I wanted to attend the pharmacy program at West Virginia University. In those days, though, they wouldn’t accept you if you weren’t going to stay in the dorms, and I had no desire to leave Charleston, which had always been home to me,” she said. “So after I told WVU to forget about it, I got a call from Morris Harvey two weeks before school started, telling me that they had a spot open for me if I wanted it.”
She didn’t regret her last-minute decision to enroll. “The teachers were excellent. The education was outstanding, and the campus environment was absolutely beautiful, just as it is today. And having graduated from Charleston High, the smaller size of the campus was very comfortable for me.”
Ms. Butterfield attended Morris Harvey as a pre-pharmacy student and finished her three years at the school in 1964. She later graduated from WVU Pharmacy School in 1970. Her subsequent career has been anything but conventional. In addition to being a practicing pharmacist, she is making her mark on both the Charleston business scene and its real estate market.
Her initial business venture was Trivillian’s Pharmacy in Kanawha City. The business originally opened in 1950 with a soda fountain in it. Ms. Butterfield bought it in 1978, when soda fountains were going the way of penny candy.
Instead of eliminating the soda fountain, she resurrected a piece of nostalgia and gave it new life. Trivillian’s, under Ms. Butterfield’s creative management, has become a local landmark and a popular place to go for everything from prescriptions to homemade chili to, of course, hand-dipped ice cream sodas, malts and sundaes.
Ms. Butterfield has also turned her well-honed vision to the field of real estate. She purchased the old Rose City Press building on Virginia Street in ____ and began to restore the façade and transform the former warehouse into condominiums. Located downtown, with spacious rooms, large windows, and unobstructed views of the Kanawha River, the condos were immediately popular and now set the standard for downtown living in Charleston.
Ms. Butterfield hasn’t forgotten the quality of the education she received at what is now the University of Charleston, and plans to continue supporting the school and its students for a very long time. She is enthusiastic about the University’s new Robert C. Byrd School of Pharmacy, and serves on the Dean’s advisory council.
“I strongly support this addition to the school because it is such a plus for both the city of Charleston and the state of West Virginia,” said Ms. Butterfield, who was one of only five women in her pharmacy school graduating class. “West Virginia has a real need for pharmacists, and I’m proud that the University of Charleston is answering that need.”
And the University of Charleston is proud of its graduate, Paula Butterfield, who has improved the lives of a generation of Charlestonians, as a pharmacist, an entrepreneur, and a real estate developer. Whether it’s from behind the counter at Trivillian’s or from the balcony of her riverside condo, Paula is an integral part of “the UC story.” Who would have thought all those years ago that someday young women (and men) could get their pharmacy education right here at home?
“I was pretty sure that I wanted to attend the pharmacy program at West Virginia University. In those days, though, they wouldn’t accept you if you weren’t going to stay in the dorms, and I had no desire to leave Charleston, which had always been home to me,” she said. “So after I told WVU to forget about it, I got a call from Morris Harvey two weeks before school started, telling me that they had a spot open for me if I wanted it.”
She didn’t regret her last-minute decision to enroll. “The teachers were excellent. The education was outstanding, and the campus environment was absolutely beautiful, just as it is today. And having graduated from Charleston High, the smaller size of the campus was very comfortable for me.”
Ms. Butterfield attended Morris Harvey as a pre-pharmacy student and finished her three years at the school in 1964. She later graduated from WVU Pharmacy School in 1970. Her subsequent career has been anything but conventional. In addition to being a practicing pharmacist, she is making her mark on both the Charleston business scene and its real estate market.
Her initial business venture was Trivillian’s Pharmacy in Kanawha City. The business originally opened in 1950 with a soda fountain in it. Ms. Butterfield bought it in 1978, when soda fountains were going the way of penny candy.
Instead of eliminating the soda fountain, she resurrected a piece of nostalgia and gave it new life. Trivillian’s, under Ms. Butterfield’s creative management, has become a local landmark and a popular place to go for everything from prescriptions to homemade chili to, of course, hand-dipped ice cream sodas, malts and sundaes.
Ms. Butterfield has also turned her well-honed vision to the field of real estate. She purchased the old Rose City Press building on Virginia Street in ____ and began to restore the façade and transform the former warehouse into condominiums. Located downtown, with spacious rooms, large windows, and unobstructed views of the Kanawha River, the condos were immediately popular and now set the standard for downtown living in Charleston.
Ms. Butterfield hasn’t forgotten the quality of the education she received at what is now the University of Charleston, and plans to continue supporting the school and its students for a very long time. She is enthusiastic about the University’s new Robert C. Byrd School of Pharmacy, and serves on the Dean’s advisory council.
“I strongly support this addition to the school because it is such a plus for both the city of Charleston and the state of West Virginia,” said Ms. Butterfield, who was one of only five women in her pharmacy school graduating class. “West Virginia has a real need for pharmacists, and I’m proud that the University of Charleston is answering that need.”
And the University of Charleston is proud of its graduate, Paula Butterfield, who has improved the lives of a generation of Charlestonians, as a pharmacist, an entrepreneur, and a real estate developer. Whether it’s from behind the counter at Trivillian’s or from the balcony of her riverside condo, Paula is an integral part of “the UC story.” Who would have thought all those years ago that someday young women (and men) could get their pharmacy education right here at home?