Lawyer Flutters Between Interests
Practicing law and collecting butterflies have two things in common, attorney Ken Denton says. Attention to detail is essential, and knowing Latin helps.
Denton, who collected and sold butterflies to put himself through law school, still divides his time between his two passions. He is now displaying his winged beauties at the Sawdust Festival and will have a display at the Orange County Fair this month.
“I’m happiest when I’m out there in bluejeans and a T-shirt,” said Denton, known around town as the Butterfly Man. “That’s when I’m really centered.”
It was boredom, though, that first inspired him. When he was a teenager, his family moved from Hollywood to Newport Beach, and Denton says he began hiking for a lack of anything more exciting to do. Soon he was catching beetles, wasps, lizards and snakes. “It moved, I caught it,” he recalled.
A former Corona del Mar High School biology teacher taught Denton how to preserve insects. He eventually focused on butterflies, a fascination that has led him to the deserts, mountains and even overseas.
He has collected thousands of butterflies over the years, Denton said, some imported from exotic locations, others picked up at garage sales. His tropical collection alone recently was appraised at $90,000.
He learned that there was money to be made from his hobby in the early 1970s, when he displayed some butterflies in frames and plastic cubes at a craft show in Laguna Beach. His inventory sold out, and a buyer from the Broadway gave Denton his card. Soon, the department store placed an order, and Denton was in business.
He continued selling butterflies at festivals, craft shows and fairs, at one point importing as many as 4,000 butterflies a month.
His interest in the law was piqued when he was threatened with a lawsuit after he used a poster of a butterfly, without permission, as a backdrop for his booth at the Texas State Fair. He enrolled at Western State University College of Law and passed the state bar exam in 1988.
Today, Denton practices civil law from his office in Laguna Beach and continues collecting butterflies, though at a slower pace. He relies on estate sales, other collectors and suppliers to expand his collection.
To people who protest that collectors contribute to the demise of butterfly species, Denton replies, “It’s never been the collector that has driven a butterfly to extinction. . . . It’s the tearing down of the environment. It’s the destruction of the rain forests.”
Almost all of the butterflies he collects now are bred in greenhouses, Denton said.
“It’s positive, even for the poor butterfly,” he said. “It’s a better deal to live your entire life in a greenhouse than to be an egg and hatch in the Colombian Amazon and take your chances.”