Elizabeth "Betty" A. Carter

Elizabeth Ann Carter (“Betty” to friends, “Bebe” to grandchildren) passed away peacefully at home in the loving care of her family on Tuesday, September 29, 2015. Betty was born on September 24, 1925, in Burlington, WA, the third in a family with four children. Growing up during the Depression, she and her siblings often learned life’s lessons the hard way, as so many children of that generation did. She remembers her family struggling financially; moving often to very small apartments as her dad tried to find work to support them; wearing cardboard in her school shoes when the soles wore away; and dropping out of school at the age of 14 to go to work, determined to make her own way in the world. At 18, she married the love of her life, Erling Albert Mattsen (“Matty”), a Minnesota-raised Norwegian, who was serving in the U.S. Navy in WWII. After the war, she worked as a waitress to put him through the College of Engineering at the University of Washington, and looked forward to a comfortable life together with her Boeing engineer raising their children, fishing for steelhead on the Skagit River and camping in the northwest with family and friends. But Matty was diagnosed with leukemia after just ten years of marriage and Betty, subsequently widowed at the young age of 29, was left alone to raise two little girls - with little money, no formal education, and no existing career plans. Courageous and street-smart, she rose to that challenge with steadfast determination. Over the next several decades, she created a hugely successful professional life with careers in interior design (culminating in furnishing luxury hotels in Hawaii) and in real estate as a broker in both California and Washington, collecting numerous outstanding business achievement awards along the way. The personal qualities, which allowed the success of this remarkable trajectory, were many: she believed in hard work; she never second-guessed herself; she was a master of the one-liner; she used her quick sense of humor and her wit to ease any challenging situation, whether in business or on a golf course; she was fiercely competitive; she was steady and true to her core values; she exhibited self-reliance and strong will as lifelong “constitutional” character traits; she maintained that adversity was nothing to dwell on, since “everything happens for a reason and a purpose”; and when she made a decision, she never looked back. On top of all that, she was a glamorous Auntie Mame and a Loretta Young on the one hand, yet at the same time could (and did) hold her own with the men in hard manual labor - digging fence post holes, painting houses, repairing broken electrical outlets, or corralling loose horses. That’s our Bebe - an amazing woman, a role model and an inspiration for so many. She retired in Wenatchee to be near her girls and their families, and she loved her life and friends here in North Central Washington. She will be dearly missed, but the delightful stories of her life adventures will keep her close to everyone who knew her, for years to come. She was preceded in death by her father, Mark Smith; her mother, Janice Smith Gerry; her husband, Erling A. Mattsen; and four siblings: Dean Smith of Anchorage, AK, Barbara Franklin of Sun City, AZ, Janice Hughes (her twin) of Seattle, WA, and Donny Smith of Los Angeles, CA. She is survived by her daughters and their husbands: Patricia (David) Notter, and Kathleen (Mark) Weyenberg; by her grandchildren: Katherine (Luke) Hansen, Michael (Anna-Lisa) Notter, Christopher (Jonika) Mattsen, Matt Weyenberg, and Cole (Lauren) Weyenberg; and by six great-grandchildren: Clara, Stella, Lucy, Willow, Lucas and Sean. In lieu of flowers, donations in Betty’s name may be made to the Women’s Resource Center in Wenatchee, an organization that was close to her heart. In accordance with Betty’s wishes, no formal funeral service is planned. Please express your thoughts and memories on the online guest book at jonesjonesbetts.com

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Elizabeth "Betty" A. Carter

September 24, 1925 - September 29, 2015