Bette Rae Drummond died February 1 in Guadalajara at the age of 83.
Born in Columbus, Nebraska on July 24, 1939, Bette’s family moved several times before settling in Bancroft, Nebraska, where she attended grade school and high school.
She began working at age eight in her father’s John Deere store, dusting hardware and farm related items for ten cents an hour. When she was 13, she worked one summer as a breakfast waitress at the Top Hat Café on the three-block-long business section of Main Street in Bancroft. Once a year she helped her father take inventory in his store. At 15, after six weeks in a bookkeeping class in high school, she took over the bookkeeping duties at her father’s John Deere store as well as functioning as a “parts man.” Her parents gave her a Singer sewing machine when she was 15, starting a life-long love affair with sewing.
Bette attended Prairie Bible Institute High School in Three Hills, Alberta, Canada for her senior year. The following year she attended Rockmont College in Longmont, Colorado. However, she missed the strong emphasis on the Bible and returned to the Prairie Bible Institute for her second year of college.
Bette married Larry Dayle Drummond of Lyons, Nebraksa in September 1959, after her second year of college. The first seven years of their marriage the couple lived in 14 different places. Short-term jobs she held included shucking seed corn and working at a Campbell’s soup factory. The couple had four children between 1960 and 1970.
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