NORWAY – A baseball field on Grove Street will be dedicated at 5:30 p.m. Thursday in memory of the man who helped build it and enthusiastically supported the town’s recreation department.

The Don Butters Field serves Norway Youth Baseball, and the dedication ceremony for it will precede the Norway Vikings versus South Paris Red game.

Butters’ widow, Brenda, and daughter, Danielle, both of Norway, will be in attendance to throw out the first pitches.

“It will be a great game,” said Deb Partridge, recreation department director.

Butters died of lymphoma, a type of cancer, in October 2007 at the age of 56.

“Donnie was a wonderful man, an integral part of getting this field built,” said Partridge, a longtime friend. “It was a field with trees. To see it today is amazing.”

The one-acre field was built with only $5,000 and Butters’ volunteer labor, machinery and money. If the town had had to pay for it, it would have cost about $50,000, Partridge said.

The construction began 10 years ago after the Norway Youth Baseball’s field at the Oxford County Fairgrounds was sold and “baseball had no place to go,” Patridge said.

In 1998, the necessary approvals and permits were in hand to build another ball field at the former Lovejoy Farms on Grove Street. Construction began in the spring of 1999 under the supervision of Butters, who used his network of friends and colleagues to get it under way. Teams started using it that summer.

A second one-acre field was developed in 2001 for softball games, and a third one of nearly three acres for baseball, soccer and other sports has just been seeded at the same site. The complex also includes fences, dugouts, maintenance building, snack shack, bleachers, batting cage, portable toilets and canoe landing on the Little Androscoggin River.

A 1970 graduate of Oxford Hills High School in Paris, Butters worked as a heavy equipment operator and eventually formed his own excavation business.

“He was our volunteer foreman,” Partridge said. “He helped us with so many things.”

Last September, Butters was presented the sign for the new field by Partridge and Norway baseball Commissioner Steve “Zeke” Merrill, who will speak at the dedication ceremony Thursday.