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BETTY BASS: BATTLEWORN BUT STILL FIGHTING
By Gerry Hitt
November 2002

If a very pretty lady with a big smile, dressed in a very stylish outfit, comes riding your way, say hello!    It will probably be Betty Bass.


Betty Bass, a slender, attractive woman in her seventies, has been a resident of the Westward Ho off and on for twenty years. Of German and Irish descent, she was born in Chicago, but like many residents at the Westward Ho, she came west to Arizona for health reasons. Her Chicago doctors told her she was not born with a strong body. She struggles with a large array of illnesses, including asthma, angina, emphysema, osteomyelitis, osteoporosis, effects of a stroke, melanoma, and another kind of cancer. She has had 25 major operations. Her second husband caused her to break her leg, as she was running from him. He pounded her shattered leg into the dirt, and osteomyelitis set in which she has fought for 30 years.

She had so many serious illnesses, she was forced to give up 5 of her 6 children to be adopted. The one boy she kept with her, her oldest, as an adult, searched for 13 years on his computer and the Internet for 3 brothers and 2 sisters, and was able to reunite them all. Betty flew to Chicago for the momentous occasion and has stayed in contact with them ever since.

           

Betty and 140 Cessna at Varadero Beach in Cuba. The Cubans thought she had paint on her hair.

She sang and played with a Cuban band on the two-week vacation.
When Betty worked for the Civil Service while still in Chicago she fulfilled a long time dream. She learned to pilot a one-engine airplane. She joined a club and in 1955 she and 87 other pilots belonging to the club flew their planes to Cuba. She sat at the same long table as Fidel Castro. She also played with a Cuban band on the two-week vacation, shown in the picture. She is also pictured in her pilot clothes. On her return, she married the man who had bought the plane she flew, but the marriage did not last long, producing one son.

Her first husband, father to her 3 oldest sons, was arrested in Chicago because of his activities with the Mafia, causing Betty extreme stress. She was very young, having married him when she was fifteen, and was pregnant with her third son when he was sentenced to a term in prison. She said her sister-in-law helped her until she finally gave up the two youngest to adoption due to ill health. She said the boys were happy with their adopted parents who had the means to give them far more privileges than she could. In fact, the son she kept protested because he did not give him up to adoption! She said she sent him to military school, which was paid for by the state and what she could earn.

She thought about these two boys when her other children came along and she found herself in dire straits again with her health. She says she found them homes with more affluent parents. She was able to place one child with a close friend, so got to see him.

Her oldest son became a police officer in Chicago, and the second one a Sheriff in Wisconsin. The third son is a doctor of alternative medicine. The 4th son had a fishing lodge. One daughter is a secretary and another became a teacher of handicapped children.

Betty always loved music, beginning to sing in the 6th grade. As an adult, when she could not work regularly, she sang everywhere she could. After she came to Arizona for her health, she teamed with Gil Mora, a piano player, and sang in nursing homes, the American Legion, and everywhere she could get engagements. Gil, now deceased, also lived for a time to the Westward Ho.
Betty worked 20 years for the American Legion in Arizona. She alternated between the Legion and DAV on weekends. She was issued a Salvation Army uniform and worked for them as a volunteer in the daytime.

At the Westward Ho she joined the pool club. She became engaged to George Patterson, a very good pool player and the most wonderful man she says she has ever known. Unfortunately he died before they could marry. She looks back on him as the love of her life.

Betty is an inspiration because of her outgoing personality and friendly ways, despite her bad health. Her hobby is sewing, and presently she is making a dress and a blouse out of beautiful shiny material that will look very good, if she ever takes the microphone to sing another song in a piano bar. In the meantime she repairs clothes for a very reasonable fee, keeps a neat house, talks to her friends and family on the phone, cooks, and struggles out to see the doctors. She says life is easier now that the American Legion , Post #1, has given her a new scooter. So if a very pretty lady with a big smile, dressed in a very stylish outfit, comes riding your way, say hello! It will probably be Betty Bass.