Sunday Obituary: All the world was a stage for independent-minded Betty Ortiz
Monday, January 5, 2009 3:32 PM PST
By Cheryll A. Borgaard
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E-mail this articleBetty Jean Ortiz wanted to be a movie star, but an early marriage and seven kids got in the way.
“She lived in the movie theater as a teen, and she just knew she was going to be a movie star,” daughter Kathy Stratton said. “And she was just beautiful. She lived in a fantasy world, but it didn’t go as planned.”
That didn’t mean that Betty didn’t fulfill other dreams of traveling and acquiring “bling,” Stratton and her sister, Twila Barbieri, said.
“She loved jewelry and wanted to create and make jewelry,” said Barbieri, 44, of Battle Ground. “She loved finer things, but she didn’t have a lot, so she made do with what she had.”
Making do meant squirreling away money so she could buy what she called “my pretties,” Barbieri said.
“She had extravagant ideas and dreams and goals,” said Stratton, 56, of Kelso. “Whenever Dad gave her money, she would put it away for her jewelry. We’d find money in the stereo player, everywhere.”
Betty Jean Harrison was born Oct. 31, 1929, in Kelso to Ruth and Barry Davids, into what her daughters describe as a well-to-do family. She attended Kelso High School and married young, having her first baby at 16. Another came when she was 17, followed by five more, the last two twins.
“It was high society and the country hick,” Stratton said of her mother’s marriage to Charles Harrison. “Our house was pretty much a shack, and she was used to living in a castle. She learned to make do and endure.”
Stratton and Barbieri recalled pots of beans simmering on the wood stove and a cellar full of canned peaches, pears, green beans and corn at their Mount Pleasant home.
“We never went without,” Stratton said. “She could make a meal out of nothing,”
“We made do,” Barbieri said. “We didn’t dress very well, but we knew we had a home. She’d take anyone in. A friend said, ‘Your mom took me in when I was destitute and took care of me.’ She loved to be needed.”
Barbieri said her mother dreamed of being a registered nurse, but instead played the role of a housewife. “My dad always said he wished he had allowed her to go to nursing school,” she said. “But in his mind, women were supposed to stay home and take care of things. He realized later that he should have encouraged her.”
The Harrisons divorced after 25 years of marriage, but remained friends. “Mom didn’t want to be married any more,” Barbieri said. “She respected my dad, but she wanted to be on her own and independent.”
“He worshiped her, but they couldn’t get along,” Stratton said.
In her late-60s, Betty enrolled in a nursing program and became a certified nursing assistant. She worked for a time for Manor Nursing Home, then as a home-health provider.
More important than finally getting into nursing, was Betty’s love of traveling to foreign countries, her daughters said. An inheritance from her parents allowed her to visit Australia, Europe, the Caribbean, the Philippines and other parts of Asia.
And to buy more jewelry.
“I think she bought over $30,000 worth of jewels during her life,” Stratton said. “Even to the day she died, she had on two diamond rings.”
Mostly, Betty Harrison Ortiz was known for her tenacity and tough-as-nails attitude, her daughters said.
“She did not follow the rules,” Stratton said.
“We could not figure out what planet she came from.”
“She was a survivor,” Barbieri said. “She was strong-willed and didn’t back down to anybody.”
Betty died Dec. 24 of complications from pneumonia. In addition to her daughters, she is survived by three sons, Michael Harrison, Randy Harrison and Charles Harrison, and a brother, Raymond Davids.
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