Betty Henry

Keep working. They’ve done really good today. Keep working and stay in school. That’s the main thing, to stay in school. Just that I had to go to school. We all graduated from high school, we did.

Betty Henry

Hello, My name is Betty Henry and I was born in Cando, North Dakota, October 1st, 1931. My mother and dad brought me back from North Dakota when I was eighteen months old. We moved to a small town in northern Minnesota by the name of Browerville, Minnesota. And we lived there and I went through kindergarten through the sixth grade in that school in Browerville.

Then we moved to another little town of Long Prairie, Minnesota. I went to school from the seventh grade to the twelfth grade there. Then that summer after I graduated, I got married. I was married for fifty-eight years.

And I started volunteering over at Cooper school. I think some of you know where Cooper school was. One of my grandsons went there so I started volunteering when he was in kindergarten. It was six years over at Cooper. Then when we lived here, we lived down the street here, only a block and a half from school and I started volunteering here thirteen years ago, right after Christmas. This is my thirteenth year.

We had a lot of friends. I had two sisters for quite a few years. We grew up. We were 12 and 9 and 7 when we had a baby brother. That was fun because I was thirteen and he was my baby. We played with all the neighbor kids. We just played baseball. We played hopscotch. We made our own paper dolls out of the Montgomery Ward catalog. We couldn’t go to the store and buy them like they can now.

We had swings that my dad made, tire swings. They weren’t swings like they are now, they were made out of a tire. We made our own skating rink, which we skated with our shoes. We didn’t have ice skates.

We used to go to my aunts and uncles, they all lived on the farm. So we use to go to the farm all the time. We went to all the farms. On Sunday we had chicken dinner, which was normal. Everybody had chicken dinner on Sunday.

We rode horses. We rode horseback. We rode them bareback. We didn’t have saddles. We’d go and get the cows so we could milk them, which was fun. We made our own fun, we didn’t have things like kids have now. We didn’t have TV; we had a radio, but no TV. We didn’t have all the things the kids have now.

But we moved to St. Paul, my husband and I did. Then we moved to Minneapolis. I have four daughters and a son. I have nine grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren. We do a lot of things together, we do. Sunday we went, my daughter and her husband picked me up and we went to the Mall of America, my eight-year old great-granddaughter danced for Courage Center through her dance school. So we were there all afternoon watching all different ages dancing for Courage Center.

We do a lot of things together, we go to birthday parties, they come and pick me up and we go all over. Go to the park. My husband and I, they love to go fishing. I did a lot of crafts with my kids, I did. I showed ‘em how to make things.

That’s why I like to work with the art teacher cause I used to do that with my own kids. I’d get colored paper and crayons, makers, whatever we’d have. We would draw. They made decorations for the Christmas tree and they made Easter bunnies. It was too cold to go outside. I always sat home with my kids. I didn’t work anytime until my kids were grown.

My dad was a truck driver and my mother stayed home and took care of the children. Women didn’t work then. No, women stayed home and took care, just like I did. I babysat a lot. I babysat for all the kids in the neighborhood. They all wanted to be with my kids. Just because I made popcorn and fudge and hot chocolate.

We used to go, usually we just went to different farms to my aunts and uncles. They’d have children and they’d visit and us kids would be outside. We were never in the house like the kids are today. We were outside playing. They couldn’t keep us in the house. And we used to go fishing and on picnics. My mother and dad had big families so there was always something to do, there was. There was always some place to go.