Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog

Official Women's March Cleveland Anniversary: Jan 19, 2019.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief

CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio-Former Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas judge Annette Garner Butler (pictured) is dead at 74.

Butler, of Cleveland, died New Year's Eve, Dec 31.

Visiting hours are Jan. 8 from 4pm-6pm at Brown-Forward Funeral Home in Shaker Heights, and a memorial service is set for Wednesday, Jan. 9 at Amasa Stone Chapel on Euclid Avenue on Cleveland's largely Black east side.

A Black Republican who had affiliates and supporters across partisan lines, Butler was appointed by Gov. John Kasich to the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas bench in November 2011 to succeed Timothy J. McGinty, who retired to run for county prosecutor, a seat he won only to lose reelection in 2016 to current County Prosecutor Mike O'Malley.

In spite of receiving 43 percent of the vote in a county that is a Democratic stronghold, she lost an election to hold on to the common pleas seat the following year to Democratic Judge Steve Gall and later ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Cleveland Municipal Court bench .

She worked as a city of Cleveland employee most recently.

Butler was well known in civic and political arenas and held numerous leadership and board posts, including at Cleveland State University, the City Club of Cleveland, the Shaker Heights Library, the Cleveland Heights-University Library, and the Federal Bar Association Northern District of Ohio chapter where she once served as chapter president.

She graduated from Cleveland's  now defunct East High and went on to  earn an undergraduate degree in sociology and sociology from Case Western Reserve University and a law degree from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.

A former attorney, Butler spent nearly 25 years with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Ohio as an assistant U.S. Attorney for civil trials and appeals, and later taught legal courses at the Academy of Court Reporting & Technology and the Justice Department National Advocacy Center.

She was a volunteer attorney for the Legal Aid Society.

The former judge is survived by two grown children, Christopher Butler and Kimberly Butler, several siblings, and a host of other relatives, associates and friends.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 5 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.