Obit: Clifford, Betty #2 (1923 - 2011)

Contact: Robert Lipprandt
Email: bob@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Clifford, Ussher, Schlageter, Swing

----Source: The Tribune - Phonograph (Abbotsford, Clark Co., Wisconsin) Wednesday, February 16, 2011, page 13

Clifford, Betty (Ussher) (? 1923 - February 8, 2011)

Anyone who sat in Betty’s kitchen and savored New England seafood chowder, sweet and sour barbecued ribs, homemade lasagna, or a dozen other specialty dishes that she made for family and friends, left the table with taste buds transformed and palate well-pleased.

Anyone who took part in a Colby City Council or School Board meeting - throughout the 1970’s, 80’s, and early 90’s where Betty served as the first female Alderman and the first female School Board member - knew that she brought a critical eye and a level of professionalism that improved the quality of the decisions made by Colby’s elected officials.

Anyone who spoke Spanish, Tagalog, or Bicol with Betty, decades after she had left the Philippines, was amazed by how well she spoke and understood the languages she had learned as a child living in the Philippines. And most anyone who spoke English with Betty noticed her unique accent and total command of a language she learned from her Canadian father and Filipino schoolteachers.

Yet most notably, any of the American and British servicemen who fought in Corregidor or Bataan during WWII, only to wind up starving and sick in Japanese prison camps in and around Manila, knew that their own survival depended, in no small part, on a group of brave Filipinos, Americans, and a Canadian named Betty Ussher, who risked capture and torture in order to smuggle food and medicine to the imprisoned Allied soldiers.

Betty’s life of adventure and hardship, struggles and triumphs came to an end last week. Two weeks after being hospitalized due to a major seizure, Betty contracted pneumonia and passed away peacefully in her sleep at Aspirus Wausau Hospital on February 8, 2011, at the age of eighty-seven.

A cosmopolitan person by definition, Betty’s life story began in Vancouver, Canada in 1923.

Born the youngest of four children to Fidela Ortiz Reyes y Roxas of the Philippines and George Odlum Ussher of Toronto, Canada, Betty began her world travels at the tender age of four. The Ussher family sailed across the Pacific and initially settled in the Philippine capital of Manila.

She attended school in her mother’s hometown of Libmanan, a town of 1000 people located 140 miles southeast of Manila; however, in 1939 she returned to Manila to live with her older brother John and his family while she continued her education. After completing a one-year intensive secretarial course in 1940, Betty began work as a secretary for a Filipino law firm, but global events soon interfered with her career.

World War II engulfed the Philippines on December 8, 1941, when the Japanese invaded Luzon. Fifty-two years later, Betty was formally recognized in Wisconsin by the Philippine-American Association of Madison and Neighboring Areas (PAMANA) for her courageous efforts in assisting American and British POW’s. A 2005 film called The Great Raid lifts up and documents several major achievements of the Philippine Resistance Movement.

In 1950, she left the war-ravaged Philippines and returned to Canada where she found secretarial work in a law office in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Later she gained employment at the University of Saskatchewan, serving as Secretary to the Director of the Extension office.

Betty met her husband, Joe Clifford, at the University of Saskatchewan in 1955, and the two were married a year later at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Saskatoon on September 29, 1956. They lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota for the next eight years and started a family there. In 1967, Joe’s company, Midland Cooperatives (now Cenex/Land-O-Lakes), promoted him to a Central Wisconsin post and the Clifford family resettled in Colby.

While a resident of Colby, Betty became the first woman elected onto the City Council and served as alderman for 14 years. She was also the first woman in Colby to vote onto the Colby School Board, an office that she held for eight years. In addition, Betty volunteered for many years as the Executive Secretary of the North American Lily Society and was a long-time member of the Minnesota Horticultural Society. Due to her love of flowers and gardening, she joined Colby’s Blue Sky Garden Club and helped them organize the Bicentennial Flower Show in Colby in 1976. During the 1980’s, she became a Wisconsin Department of Agriculture Certified Judge for flower shows. On top of all that, she was also one of the central organizers of the first two, state-wide quilt shows to be held in Colby.

From 1992 to 1997, Betty worked with the Abbotsford Head Start program as an interpreter and translator for Spanish-speaking children and their parents. In 2002, she tutored Mexican adult learners studying English as a foreign language.

She is survived by her husband, Joe; six children, Mike (Annemarie) Batavia, Ill., Jim (Tlalli Mota Castilla) San Diego, Calif., Mary (Mike Schlageter) Verona, John, Minneapolis, Minn., Rick, Westminster, Colo., Bob, Boise, ID; four grandchildren, Lauren Marie, Adam, Jonathan, and Nicholas; and two great-grandchildren, Thomas and Maria.

Betty was preceded in death by her parents; three sisters, Marie Corito, Frances, and Helen; two brothers, John and George; and her son Bill.

It was Betty’s wish that in lieu of gifts or flowers, a charitable donation be made to the Carter Center, an organization founded by Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter that promotes peace, raises public awareness of mental health issues, and fights disease around the world. Go to www.cartercenter.org to find ways to give online or by mail.

A Mass in Hope of Resurrection will be held at St. Mary’s Church in Colby on February 19 at 11:00 a.m. with visitation beginning at the church at 10:00 a.m. and a lunch following the service at St. Mary’s school cafeteria. Joe’s nephew Fr. John Swing will officiate.

A Memorial Mass followed by interment of ashes will occur in Caledonia, Minnesota on June 25 where the Clifford family, Joe’s Caledonia relatives and friends, and some of Betty’s relatives will have an opportunity to celebrate the life of Elizabeth Fidela Ortiz y Reyes Ussher Clifford.

Note: Birth information was not published with obituary.