The H. E. Butt Foundation is founded by Mary Holdsworth and Howard Butt, Sr., focused on charity, philanthropy, and education.

In its early days, the Foundation promotes literacy, helps fund numerous recreational and childcare facilities, and begins a tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment program in the Rio Grande Valley. Mary and Howard, Sr., develop long-term goals to open a camp that will be available free of charge to anyone unable to afford a camp experience.

Mary also starts or leads several other nonprofits from her dining table, including the State Crippled Children’s Program and the Cameron County Child Welfare Board. She also expands library services and buys the first equipment for testing the hearing and vision of schoolchildren.

Mary also starts or leads several other nonprofits from her dining table, including the State Crippled Children’s Program and the Cameron County Child Welfare Board. She also expands library services and buys the first equipment for testing the hearing and vision of schoolchildren.

Mary Holdsworth Butt is appointed by Governor Allan Shivers to the governing board of Texas State Hospitals and Special Schools, which was supplanted in 1965 by the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation. For eighteen years, she was the only woman member of this board.

Throughout her tenure, she visits every mental institution in the state and brings much needed reform to the treatment of the mentally ill. Often she advocates simply that they be treated with the same dignity every human deserves—for example, she fights for mental institutions to serve meals on dishes with silverware, rather than out of steel bowls with wooden spoons.