Mick Dennehy looked at me like I just asked the dumbest question in the history of postgame press conferences.

It was Saturday, Sept. 20. 1997, and Dennehy’s Montana Grizzlies beat Saint Mary’s 35-14 in a non-conference football game at Washington-Grizzly Stadium. My fellow 1993 Butte High graduate Josh Paffhausen just broke the school record with 15 pass receptions.

Paffhausen, a senior at the time, turned those 15 receptions into 175 yards and two touchdowns.

He broke the previous record of 14 set by Mike Trevathan in 1990. That record was tied twice by Joe Douglas in 1996.

Two days later, Paffhausen was selected by ESPN and USA Today as the NCAA Division I-AA National Offensive Player of the Week.

The remarkable thing about Paffhausen’s big day was that he spent the previous Sunday and Monday in the hospital with a dangerously high fever of 104 degrees.

Paffhausen also suffered from a severe headache, and he was so sick that his wife at the time told me that she was afraid that he might die.

So, at the press conference following the Grizzly win, I asked Dennehy, who was in his second year as head coach, if he was surprised that Paffhausen was able to play in the game so soon after such a frightening ordeal.

After staring at me like I was a buffoon for a moment, Dennehy said, “Bill, you’re from Butte. I’m from Butte. Josh is from Butte. He’s a Butte guy. Of course I knew he was going to play.”

Notice that Dennehy, one of the toughest coaches to come out of this old mining camp, called Paffhausen a “Butte guy.” He did not call him a “Buttian.”

Years ago, my dad told me a story about the great Butte handball player Steve Stanisich playing a tournament game in front of a big crowd.

Stanisich went down low to get the ball off the floor — just before it hit the second time — to score a point.

As the referee declared “tally,” Stanisich’s opponent started to protest. He argued that the ball “skipped,” and he should get the side out.

The guy kept arguing and arguing with the referee. He was screaming because he was sure that Stanisich did not get to the ball.

Most players would not have gotten to it, but Stanisich was not most players. He is one of the best players this state has ever seen, and he got it.

While the guy kept arguing, Stanisich did not even look back at his opponent. He just stood in the service box, bouncing the ball as he waited for his next serve.

Eventually, the referee interrupted the argument to ask, “Steve, did you get it?”

Stanisich answered with a simple, “Yep.”

“Tally,” the referee said.

Then the referee, who was not from Butte, turned to someone in the crowd and said, “Steve is a Butte guy. Butte guys tell the truth.”

The referee did not call him a “Buttian.”

That moniker, “Buttian,” is something that I have been hearing from some in the younger generations or from some newcomers to Butte, and it makes my skin crawl.

A couple who moved to Butte from New York last fall was featured on the KXLF News last week in a story about a spring snowstorm. The man referred to a “Buttian winter,” and I wanted to go through the television and shake some sense into him.

That is not what we are. We are Butte guys and Butte girls. We are Butte Rats. No pretense needed.

The term “Buttian” is, to me, a sign of the gentrification we are seeing that has come to our part of the world. That name might technically go back decades, and Google will tell you it is real.

But I was in my late 40s before I heard anyone try to call anyone from Butte a “Buttian.”

Today, we have newcomers moving in who do not know or maybe they do not like our identity. They are the ones who tell us to put our dogs when walking in remote locations. They are the ones telling us to stop lighting off those fireworks.

Kevin Costner and his that silly Yellowstone show I refuse to watch probably bear the brunt of the blame. They are responsible for people coming here in love with a fictional version of the “Last Best Place.” Then those people try to turn it into something else.

Now, I am not one of those isolationists who doesn’t want anyone to move here. I welcome people from all over the world to move to the Mining City. I just wish they wouldn’t try to change us.

For generations, the people Butte people have been known for their hard work, honesty and friendly disposition. We have also always been the life of the party wherever we go.

Sure, there are exceptions that seem to be increasing every year. But, for the most part, that is still true about the city that helped electrify the world and win a couple of World Wars.

In Butte, we don’t think we’re better than other people. Well, maybe we do, but we usually don’t act like we’re better than other people. We certainly do no look down on other cities like people from other cities do to us.

Terms like “Buttian” seem like something you would hear in Missoula or Bozeman, where they are “Missoulians” and “Bozemanites.”

That is fine. They can call themselves what they want. But places like Butte and Great Falls don’t need silly nicknames like that.

That name makes us seem soft. Even worse, it makes us sound pretentious, and it is time to stop once and for all.

If you hear someone refer to someone from the Holey City as a “Buttian,” it is your obligation to set them straight. We cannot accept that name from newspaper or television reporters. We cannot let newcomers refer to the people from this blue-collar city by a nickname that makes it sound like we are going to die their hair.

Butte guys and Butte girls deserve the simplicity of being a Butte guy or a Butte girl. That Butte guy who set that Grizzly certainly does.

Paffhausen’s record, by the way, lasted nearly two full decades. Jerry Louie-McGee broke it when he caught 21 passes against Cal Poly in 2016.

To me, though, Paffhausen’s day still stands as the greatest in Grizzly history. That is because we found out later that season that he was playing without an ACL in one of his knees.

Josh previously had surgery on that knee, and the replacement ACL somehow disintegrated. Don’t ask me how that happened, but that is what one of the team trainers told me.

To this day, I believe that injury is what kept him from a playing in the National Football League. To this day, I maintain that Paffhausen is the most gifted athlete I have ever seen come out of the Mining City.

He was also tough. Not only did Paffhausen leave the hospital to set a Grizzly record, he did it while basically playing on one leg.

That, though, did not surprise any of his teammates and coaches. Paffhausen played the whole season on that bum leg. He did it because he knew his teammates needed him and because he knew tha not playing was never an option.

That is why Dennehy looked at me like I asked a dumb question about a “Butte guy.”

A “Buttian” never would have played in that game.

— Bill Foley, who gets nauseous from pretense, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 or Bluesky at @foles74.bsky.social. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.