Betty R. Nethaway

Betty Nethaway, 99, wanted to share her 100th birthday with her son. She didn’t quite make it. Artist, sculptor, photographer and humanitarian, Betty succumbed to the gnawing tooth of time in Baylor Scott & White Hillcrest Medical Center on Aug. 10, 2020. Betty’s plans to celebrate her 100th birthday with her son, born on her 18th birthday, fell short by less than four months. Loving, selfless and caring, Betty overcame scarlet fever, the Great Depression, breast cancer and macular degeneration but always remained upbeat and spirited. Betty was born Elizabeth Ruth Rowland in her Fort Worth home on Dec. 4, 1920. Her father, Roy C. Rowland, was a life-long newspaper man. Her mother, Agnes Pannell Rowland, a teacher and artist, produced fashion art for newspapers and department stores. At the tender age of 17, Betty was married on Christmas Eve by George W. Truett, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, to Carl Lewis Smith. A year later, on her 18th birthday, her son Rowland was born. That marriage, however, soon dissolved. Later, working as a reporter and copy editor at the Terrell, Texas, Tribune, Betty fell in love and married the Tribune’s young managing editor, Charles D. Nethaway, fresh out of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. That marriage was “until death do us part.” During World War II, with her husband overseas in the Army Air Corps, Betty raised her growing family of two sons on a red-ant farm in Handley, Texas, just south of the Interurban line. After the war, her husband resumed his journalism career with the United Press agency in Dallas, a career that took the family from Dallas to New Orleans and finally to Kansas City, Missouri, where he became UP’s Midwest bureau chief. Before her husband’s premature death at age 43, Betty cared for her family and participated in school and civic activities in their Kansas City suburban home in Belton, Missouri. Her artistic activities included painting mural scenes on her home’s walls, making sculpture pieces from assorted objects, attending photography school, and taking courses at the Kansas City Art Institute. She opened and ran Nethaway Studio, where she specialized in studio photography, especially using heavy oils over studio portraits. She also shot traditional photography, including weddings, school photos and commercial photography. Following her husband’s death in 1957, Betty sold her photography studio and became art director for a Kansas City advertising agency, until she responded to President John Kennedy’s new Peace Corps initiative by answering his challenge: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” Selected as the nation’s oldest Peace Corps volunteer at that time, Betty was assigned to assist native artists in Peru, Ecuador and Columbia improve their earnings from their arts and crafts. In the early cold-war era of the Peace Corps, Betty and her fellow volunteers were required to complete rigorous training in Puerto Rico that included rock climbing, rappelling and other survival skills. Betty returned to her native Texas after ending her Peace Corps work in Walter Reed Hospital recovering from an illness incurred in Peru. She next became the art director for a Dallas advertising agency before moving to Colorado to study pottery and stained glass. Betty became a glass artist specializing in creative kiln-fired glass designs and traditional panels displayed in Denver’s Artistries in Glass Gallery. As time passed and her eyesight deteriorated due to macular degeneration, Betty created botanical drawings in various media often under a magnifying reader. Finally, at age 96, and after a couple of falls, Betty reluctantly agreed that she needed assistance. She moved into an assisted living apartment in Waco’s Ridgecrest Retirement and Healthcare Community, near her oldest son who had retired from a newspaper career. Betty was preceded in death by her husband, Charles D. Nethaway; her son, Charles D. Nethaway, Jr.; her brother, William Elton Rowland; her granddaughter, Cynthia D. Hood; and too many pampered pets to be recalled. She will be missed terribly by her many friends and her surviving relatives, including her son, Rowland Nethaway; her grandchildren, Alpha N. Morris, Stephanie N. Cruickshank and her husband, Rick, Erik Nethaway and Stefan Nethaway; and her great grandchildren, Chase and Austin Morris, Elizabeth Nethaway and Luna Barrett. At her direction, Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey Funeral Home will handle her cremation. Her memorial service and inurnment in the Nethaway family plot in Belton, Missouri, will be held at a later date. The family invites you to leave a message or memory on our “Tribute Wall” at www.WHBfamily.com.