Betty Lou Wright Burns

Betty Lou Wright was born August 19, 1936 in Rubyville, Ohio in a little house next to the fire station. However, she did not remember that little house, for she was too young when her parents moved to a new house her father had just built. She grew up next door to the Thomas family in the house her father had built next to the Long Run Elementary School. The Thomases, Fred and Gertrude, had two little girls Jane Ann and Sharon Kay. As Betty grew, she and Jane Ann became best friends. As little girls, they played together constantly. Somehow they convinced Fred and Gertrude to let them turn an old chicken coop into a play house. They scrubbed it, gathered a few cracked dishes to play with, and got some of the local boys (probably including Betty's brothers) to keep a fire in the wood stove that had been left inside the coop. There they fried potatoes and played house for hours on end.

Both Betty and Jane Ann attended the Long Run Elementary School next door to the Wrights' house. Betty recalled that the school had only a few rooms, one for each class 1-6. Kindergarten did not exist in those days. Sometimes when school was out, Betty would come over and roller skate around the sidewalks surrounding the school building, and on cold mornings, her father would carry her through the snow to the door so her feet would not get wet or cold.



As Betty grew older, she began attending the new high school up the road. The walk from home was much farther, but each day she would walk home to get her lunch because she said she did not feel comfortable eating in front of the other students. She took business classes at the high school such as typing, book keeping, and shorthand, common classes for girls to take in those days. At the time the nearby town of Portsmouth, Ohio was booming, and there were many offices and stores where a person could get a job and make a living without having a college education. Betty finished school and graduated in 1953 when she was only 16 years old. She applied for many jobs, but no one would hire her because she was so young. At the time her parents offered to hire her to work at the house keeping it clean and caring for her ailing mother. They had no idea that the arrangement would become long term.

As Betty came of age, she began to socialize with friends. They liked to go to restaurants in Kentucky and just drive around. One night in late January 1955 when Betty was only 18 years old, she and four of her friends went out driving like they usually did. Her mother said not to leave town, and Betty had no intention of disobeying. However, the kids decided that they wanted to go to Huntington. They would tell her mother when they returned. They were driving toward Huntington, but they missed the turn. Somehow they ended up in Louisa, Kentucky on a dark curvy road. They got to a poorly marked section of the road, and thinking that it went straight when it did not, the boy driving the car drove over a 75 foot embankment and hit a retaining wall. Betty was critically injured hitting her head on impact, a fate that resulted in traumatic brain injury and life long mild cogitive impairment. Betty spent 30 days in a coma at St. Mary's hospital in Huntington, WV. The doctors did not think she would live at first, but she pulled through. It took her about 7 years to recover to the point she could have a normal life. When Betty recovered, she continued to care for her parents until her mother's death in 1970. Betty was 36 at the time, stil unmaried, and still living in her parents' home.

When her mother died and Coy Wright eventually remarried to Edna Jenkins, her father bought her a trailor, and she moved to Blue Run next to her sister Hazel. She lived there a couple years and began working at Gezepie's Pizza. It was there that she met Donald Eugene "Gene" Burns, a man who lived in Minford. In less than two weeks after meeting, the two married, much to her brothers' dismay and protest. They moved to Minford, Ohio where Gene and his father Clay owned a house. She did not get along with Clay, for he was very disagreeable and rude. Then on November 22, 1975, Betty gave birth to one daughter Donna Jean Burns. Betty and Gene continued to live in Minford, and she remained a stay-at-home mother and house wife. She didn't have any more children so she spent much of ehr time playing with her daughter, telling her stories, and caring for her. In 1994 Gene died of cancer, and Donna and Betty continued to live together until Donna married in 2002. Betty lived most of the rest of her life in Minford with a couple of exceptions. She lived in Kentucky for 3 or 4 years until her sister Hazel bought the home she and Gene had shared. Betty moved in with Hazel in 2003, and she continued to live in the house until 2016 when she had to go into a nursing home due to failing health. Betty died at the age of 85 on April 15, 2022, the birthday of her father and brother Ron.