Betty Lou (Anderson) Smith

Our mother, Betty Lou Anderson Smith, left our existence on Monday, March 6, 2023. She died peacefully, in her bed, just shy of her 98th birthday. Healthy and mobile, she caught Covid during the last week of February.

Mom was born March 18, 1925, in Duluth, Minnesota to parents Alice and Ivor Anderson and joined a couple years later by brother Jimmy. She grew up and graduated from high school in Proctor, Minnesota and had happy memories of the Norwegian-side family farm at Pike Lake. She graduated from Iowa State University (then College) in Home Economics. It was at Iowa State that she met her life partner, Richard Smith, of Peru, IA. The two started a farming life, then moved to Des Moines, then to Fort Dodge, IA, and then moving to Woodland Park, Colorado for retirement, ultimately living with family in Beulah, CO.

Betty was preceded in death by her parents, her husband of 69 years, her brother, and pretty much all other family and friends of her age cohort. She is survived by son Mike (Joni) of Beulah, daughter Peg (Sergio) of Boulder, UT; daughter Cindy Galvin (Patrick), of Beulah; and son Kyle (Marti) of Colorado Springs. She took quiet pride and great joy in her grandchildren Abbi Smith (Mark), of Madison, WI; Brett Smith (Betcy), of Arvada, CO; Anne Galvin-Soto (Isidro) of Pueblo; Emma Galvin (Daniel), of Poncha Springs, CO; and Erin Smith (Dave), of Arvada. And she absolutely reveled in the antics of her sweetpea great-grandson Xander Galvin-Soto.

The family wishes to thank Sangre de Cristo Community Care -- angels on earth with the compassion and care that they provided for Mom and all of us.

Betty’s cremated remains will lie interred with the earthly remains of her husband in the Woodland Park Cemetery, a peaceful place in a beautiful area that she and Richard came to love as their home.

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