Betty Mae Burris

The worn black and white snapshot shows two smiling young girls, probably 10 or 12 years old, leaning up against a weathered wooden building. On the back of the photo in faded pencil are these words: #8220;Betty Mae Oliver and Mina Nelson at the Elkhorn School, we were the only students.#8221; That photo was taken in the mid 1930s in Carter County Montana near the very small town of Albion. There is something about Betty Mae#8217;s smile in that photo that let#8217;s you know that she likes where she is, that she loves her dogs and her horses and her great big Cowgirl hats and enjoys the beauty of that part of Montana. But there is something else in that smile that makes you think this girl wants to see things and do things in a big way and will probably say goodbye to Montana before too long and begin her great adventure. Betty Mae Oliver was born in Belle Fourche South Dakota on June 7, 1926 to Jim and Daisy Lee Oliver. Betty was raised on the family ranch near Albion, attended grades 1-8 in a one room school house near the ranch and attended High School in Belle Fourche. The family photos of Betty Mae during these years almost always include her dogs and horses. These weren#8217;t lap dogs and slick haired show ponies. These were ranch tough animals that knew about 30 below temperatures and wind packed snow that buried buildings. Betty Mae#8217;s love of animals was a constant throughout her life. The same cannot be said for 30 below and wind packed snow. Reconstructing Betty Mae#8217;s life after High school can be done fairly easily by studying some of the mementos#8217; she left behind. There is a spindly legged blue stuffed horse with a gold MSC brand sewn on it#8217;s hip. The Stuffed horse is covered with signatures of her many friends she made while attending Montana State college in the 1940s. There is a strange looking split-nib ink pen with a swivel on top that Betty Mae used in the 1950s to draw some of the first USGS topography maps of Alaska. She did this while working for the USGS in Denver. There are rolls of vellum with intricate engineering drawings in black ink that were used to build freeways in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. Betty Mae produced these drawings as a Senior Delineator draftswoman employed for 25 years by the California Transportation Department. There is a photo of her and John, her beloved husband of 49 years, on the trail at 11,000 feet elevation in the rugged Sierra Nevada mountains where they loved to backpack and fish. There is a small tin box full of artificial flies with a label stuck on it that says #8220;Betty Mae#8217;s very own flies#8221;, a message to John to look elsewhere for replacements. There is a pile of blue passports that she and John used after retiring to Oregon as they traveled the world in the 1980s and 1990s. There is a large ziplock bag full of decorative refrigerator magnets that held photos of her son and his family, photos of her Step-daughters and their families, photos of her sister and sister in law and their families. Photos, kitchen magnets, and pens may not seem like much of a legacy but to those who knew Betty Mae, they represent a very full, rewarding and loving life. Her passing leaves an empty space in our lives and will be dearly missed. Betty Mae is survived by her son and daughter-in-law Skip and Linda Willmuth and grand daughter Emily of Bozeman, MT; sister Maxine Enerson of Belle Fourche, SD; 4 step-daughters Becky McCallister of Paso Robles, CA, Cheryl Beser of Santa Clarita, CA, Sue Kumley of Dallas, OR, Laurel Lewis of Pasadena, CA ; and sister-in-law Carol Britvec of Watsonville, CA. Betty Mae was preceded in death by her husband John Burris, and her parents Jim and Daisy Oliver. Services will be announced at a later date in Belle Fourche, SD and Eugene, OR.