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The family of Betsy Bellflower uploaded a photo
Thursday, February 22, 2018
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Debbie McCarty posted a condolence
Monday, June 30, 2014
I am so sorry for your loss. I lost my mom over 14 years ago, and I still miss her every day. Treasure your memories and talk about her often. She will always be with you.
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Larry Marter posted a condolence
Sunday, June 29, 2014
My mother, Kathryn Marter, and I drove Betsy to Erlanger when she was in labor with Blaine. I ran every red light on Broad Street. Blaine was born 30 minutes after the got there.
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Paula Ables lit a candle
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
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We will miss your smiling face and quick wit. You will always have a special place in our hearts. I know you are hanging out in heaven with Cotton and smiling down on those of us who are left behind. I thank God I got to know you Dear Betsy. You are loved and missed. Mouse & Paula
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Patsy Miller Pelfrey posted a condolence
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Betsy I met Betsy Burkhart when I first moved to the Valley in 1955 and we lived behind Bob Carnes grocery store off Schmitt Road. We hit it off right away because we were both tomboys and loved to climb trees and sing. I know we scared my mother half to death when she spotted us about 30 feet up in a big sycamore tree, hanging by our knees. We would sit up in that tree and sing old Patience and Prudence songs like, “Tonight You Belong to Me” and “Got Along Without You Before I Met You, Gonna Get Along Without You Now”. In seventh grade, we sang that as a duet at the old Chattanooga Valley Elementary School Halloween Carnival talent contest. We had on matching corduroy jumpers that my mother made us. We didn’t win a prize but we had fun. We were fortunate to live in a time when it was safe for young girls to be out late at night around the neighborhood and we pushed that to the limit on Halloweens. We roamed all over the ridge and up the hollers. Sometimes we got Sheila Anderson to go with us and we visited back and forth at her house, we must have walked 10 or 15 miles a day, just prowling the creek banks and woods. Don’t mean to gross you out, but once after a lot of rain and flooding, we were down at the creek and found lots of things that had washed up on the banks. One thing was a dead dog, fat and bloated from being in the water so long. Naturally, we had to get sticks and give it a poke---it promptly exploded and the stink nearly did us in. Wouldn’t try that ever again. I spent many nights at Betsy’s when she lived on the Collins estate with Unc Russell and Aunt Mildred. We had lots of slumber parties with our junior high friends and her house was always a fun place to be. I guess she had more parties like that than any of the rest of us, mainly because she was the only kid at her house and there was five at my house. Aunt Mildred always had good snacks for us to eat and I had my very first taste of Nestle’s Quik at Betsy’s house. It was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted! One night before bed, we took a bath together (girls always did that back in the 50’s) and decided that the cherry tree outside the bathroom window was full of ripe cherries. We just opened the window and climbed out of the tub into the tree and ate so many cherries that we nearly got sick. We had a hard time explaining all the cherry pits Aunt Mildred found in the bathroom the next day. It was a good thing that there was a lot of privacy near the house. After Betsy and her folks moved up on Ridgeland Road, we found a new hobby! The back lot of their place was wooded with lots of young saplings. We learned that we could run down the hill, grab onto one of the small trees as high up as we could reach and our weight would bend the tree over and we “rode” the tree to the ground. After a few weeks of this, all the small trees at the back were nearly laying on the ground. We had such a good time, laughing and riding those trees. Once we were sassy to Aunt Mildred and she really paid us back. While we were busy doing our own thing, she got all our panties and bras and threw them up in the trees in the front yard! We nearly died because, we had just gotten to the age to be able to wear bras but sure didn’t want anybody to see them. We really scrambled to get all our underwear out of the trees that day and learned quickly not to sass Aunt Mildred. Betsy and I were both pretty smart students at Chattanooga Valley. We made a lot of A’s and B’s, but mostly A’s. We didn’t compete, just liked to learn and participate in class. We had lots of girlfriends and a few boys that we “got along with” but mostly, we had slumber parties and went to town to the movies on Saturdays. We knew which Saturdays the cadets from Castle Heights Military Academy would be in town in their uniforms and loved to flirt with them. If they had said “boo” to us then, we would have run like scared rabbits. High school brought a lot of changes. We added the girls and boys from the Cove and Mountain to our groups of friends and made life-long friends in the process. Marie Rush and Patsy Grant, along with L.J. Grant and Dewey Stoker became good friends. We were finally old enough to date and the kids from the Cove were new to us so we wanted to spend time with them. We double dated several times and went to the Broad Street Drive-In Theater a lot with car-loads of kids. Living in the 50’s for us was like “Happy Days” on TV with Richey Cunningham and his bunch. We were young, innocent and the worst thing you could do back then was drink a beer or smoke a cigarette. Only the boys smoked, if we did, we had to sneak one. Some of our girlfriends from the Cove were smokers, so we had to try it. My folks would have killed me if they knew I tried cigarettes and I would have died myself, if I had ever drunk a beer back then. Of course, our Daddy’s smoked but that didn’t mean we could. Betsy and I had most all our high school classes together and kept up the good grades. Betsy played basketball, I was more a librarian type. We had fun at the football games, being part of the Pep Club and dancing with the upper-class guys at the sock hops after the games. One of my most vivid memories, about Betsy, was a real surprise to me. We had always been considered tom-boys but one day at school, we were standing next to the coach’s car in front of the high school when one of the boys came up and stuck his hand out toward Betsy. He had a big grasshopper in his hand and Betsy began screaming. She was really scared of that thing and I was so amazed! I never dreamed that she was even the least bit afraid of anything. She scared that boy with her screaming as much as he scared her with the grasshopper. To this day, I can still see her standing there, absolutely terrified. Betsy was really active in high school and always had a great sense of humor. Our senior yearbook had the following: Basketball 2,3,4; Football Sponsor 1,3; Letterman’s Club 3,4; Literary Club 1; Beta Club 2,3,4; Glee Club1,4; Pep Club 1,2,3; Field Day 1,2,3,4; Eagle Staff 2,3; Editor 4; Football banquet 1,2,3; Fire Marshall 3, 4; Homecoming Crowns 1, 4; Served at Junior-Senior Banquet 2; Basketball Banquet 2; First Place in Fashion Show 1; Wittiest 4. And she added in my Annual—Married 4; Pregnant 4. In the Class Will she willed her Beta Mind, Eagle Eye, and basketball bruises to Patsy Johnson, in hopes that she would use them. Betsy kept her Beta mind and Eagle eye for as long as I knew her. I moved away from the Valley after high school, went off to college and then moved to Huntsville and lost touch with Betsy for several years. When I would come home for a visit, I usually got a chance to see her and we would sit and talk and catch up on all the changes in our lives. We both made a lot of those. I visited her at her little garage apartment off John Thompson Road where the kids were always falling off the stairs and then at her apartment on Mountain View Circle. As long as she stayed around the Valley I was able to keep up with her but when she moved a little farther out, I lost a lot of years with her. There were a few times when Betsy was living on Sand Mountain that Marie and I would meet her for lunch somewhere and catch up on the news. We all liked Mexican food and that was a favorite place to meet in Trenton. Sometimes Betsy, Patsy Grant, Marie and I would meet at Marie’s home in Mountain Shadows and sit on the porch, them with their “drinks” and me with my coffee and talk for hours. After Marie moved to the Cove, we met there a few times too but it seemed harder to find time for all of us to get together. In October, 2012, Betsy came to visit me at my home in the Valley where I have lived for nearly 35 years. We drove all over the Valley that day, every little road and street where we lived and played over 50 years ago. She pointed out houses where she had lived, people she knew years back and we puttered around the Valley for hours. We went up by the old Collins estate, now in disrepair, and through roads that weren’t really roads anymore. All the old houses that she and Aunt Mildred, Unc Russell and Maude (Betsy’s grandmother) had lived in were still there and it brought back a lot of memories. We laughed at all the antics we had done and had such a good time. We went to eat at Zaxby’s for lunch and then came back to the house and got our computers out and did some family tree research. I enlarged a small picture of her father Malcomb Howard Blye for her and we did some speculating on just what might have happened to her mother Nellie Blye who disappeared when Betsy was a young child. It was a really good day for us after all those years. Betsy complained a lot that day of having trouble breathing because of her COPD and we both complained with our bum knees. Getting old was no fun for either of us. I got a phone call from Marie one day in May,2013, that Betsy had been diagnosed with cancer and that it was pretty far advanced. That news hurt me in my heart because I knew, as a retired nurse, it was not good. Marie and I made plans to visit Betsy in Huntsville where she was at the time, awaiting test results. We drove down on May 20 to find her in Rehab, sitting in the wheelchair waiting to go for treatment. She was joking and complaining at the same time and looked really well for what she was enduring that day. She had just had a rod inserted into her right leg to stabilize it in order to have Chemo later on. It wasn’t many days later that Betsy went home with Hospice to care for her during her last days. I got to see Betsy one last time on June 8, 2013. She had oxygen on and was sleeping off and on in her hospital bed at her home on Sand Mountain. I held her hand and asked if she could hear me. She smiled just a little and nodded her head. I talked to her for a bit and she drifted off to sleep. I stayed for an hour or two, talking with her daughter, Susan, and Betsy’s friends and family, knowing that this might be the last chance I had to be with her. As Betsy wrote in my high school Annual, “we know so much about each other, some things we can talk about and some things we can’t”. We always respected that about each other and didn’t always agree about the right and wrong of things. I loved Betsy for the friend she was, we never pretended with each other and I will never forget her. Patsy Miller Pelfrey
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Erbie Lyons lit a candle
Friday, June 20, 2014
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Can so often remember going over to Mildred and Russell's to see Betsy and them. We were all family back then. So proud of her when they did a write up in the paper about her being the first female postal carrier in Chattanooga. I went off to the military and remember coming home on leave and went over to them and met Susan when she was little. The cousins were all planning a maybe get together and am so sorry we didn't. Betsy you were a great later and wonderful cousin and my prayers and thoughts with your family.
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Sheila Hickman posted a condolence
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
So many memories made with my buddy in high school ! I will never forget you Betsy !!!!
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Sheila Hickman lit a candle
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
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julie stargel lit a candle
Monday, June 16, 2014
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Bonnie posted a condolence
Monday, June 16, 2014
Sorry for your loss....our thoughts are with you. Love, Frank and Bonnie
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Bonnie lit a candle
Monday, June 16, 2014
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Earlene Arthur lit a candle
Monday, June 16, 2014
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Ed Alkire posted a condolence
Monday, June 16, 2014
Betsy loved to play bingo and like most people she liked playing for large amounts of money. She came out to visit us in Washington one year and went to play at the only place in town and she won the grand prize of a microwave coffee pot. It was really funny. So the next year at Christmas she gave me the coffee pot, it was still new in the box. This turned into a fun tradition between us. Every year I would give it to her for either her birthday or Christmas and then she would do the same. This was one of my greatest memories, she loved to joke around and we had a lot of fun with this. She will really be missed.
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Lorie Mcdowell posted a condolence
Monday, June 16, 2014
A new Angel has arrived in heaven....the whole family loved your sense of humor Betsy and I enjoyed getting to know you....you will be missed! LOVE, LORIE
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Lorie Mcdowell lit a candle
Monday, June 16, 2014
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Dewey and Patsy(Grant) Stoker lit a candle
Monday, June 16, 2014
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Darlene Wallace lit a candle
Monday, June 16, 2014
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Betsy was the most awesome lady ever. She made me her waitress even though I had no clue of what I was doing, and then I came into work one day and Cotton tells me I am on the dart team when I had never even had one in my hand those were the best days ever I will miss you so much my dear friend
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Tom Grant lit a candle
Sunday, June 15, 2014
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Michael Morton posted a condolence
Sunday, June 15, 2014
I remember taking Betsy to the Hamilton County Fair. I was where Warner Park in now. We had a great time. Nice memories. My prayers go out to Betsy's extended family. Rev. Michael (Mickey) Morton.
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Larry Marter lit a candle
Sunday, June 15, 2014
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cjrigney@yahoo.com posted a condolence
Sunday, June 15, 2014
To my dear friend thank you so much for always being there when i needed you to be.you taught me a lot.i will remember our fun times together at johnnys place.i will miss your bluntness and honesty, and of course your ability to always just crack me up.rest in peace
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Susan Alkire lit a candle
Sunday, June 15, 2014
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To my Momma, you are so missed. Only you and I could laugh at jokes no one else even thought was funny. I could share anything and everything with you. You were my best friend and never passed judgment on anything we (your children) did. You were one of the strongest women I know. Your life was not easy but you always had a joke and a smile. I love you and miss you. Your daughter, Susan Alkire
Contact
(423) 843-2525
Legacy Funeral Home
And Cremation Center
8911 Dallas Hollow Road
Soddy Daisy, TN 37379
(423) 821-7551
Wann Funeral And Cremation Center
3918 Tennessee Avenue 104
Chattanooga, TN 37409
