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JAMES -- Betty Forsythe James, a resident of Albuquerque for more than fifty years, died on Memorial Day, Monday, May 27, 2007. She was 92. Betty grew up on Priest Lake, in the wilderness of Northern Idaho, where her father was a foreman for the Diamond Match Company. There she became a champion long-distance swimmer and also discovered her life-long love of books and the English language. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Washington State University where she was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. Betty returned to Priest Lake after graduation where she met and married a young aerial photographer, Jack G. James. When Jack volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Corps at the outbreak of World War II, and was stationed in the China-Burma-India theater, Betty and Jack agreed that she should leave the home they had built in Spokane, and return with their young children to Priest Lake. There, for the duration of the war, she raised her daughters in the mountains and woods that she loved and in the familiarity of the lumber camps where she herself had grown up. Betty was a formidable poker player and an accomplished deer hunter. She gained more local fame when she defended her home by shooting a black bear set on pillaging the provisions laid in for the winter in the root cellar dug into hillside behind her cabin home on the lake. Betty was in every sense a pioneer woman, an outdoors woman, an athlete and an equestrian, whose first career was that of an Air Force wife, moving with her husband and children through many homes, and many military aerial reconnaissance assignments, before arriving in Albuquerque in 1953 where Jack served with the Weapons Effects Test Division, Defense Atomic Support Agency. By the time of his retirement in 1964, Albuquerque had become a permanent home for the family. Their two daughters attended Highland High School and completed their college educations in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Their son graduated from New Mexico Military Institute at Roswell and the University of New Mexico. Betty always, everywhere, had friends, delighted by her vitality, her intellect, and a spontaneous sense of humor. For many years in Albuquerque she was an energetic leader of a Girl Scout equestrian troop and kept her own horse "Chico" at the Four Hills stables. She returned to her first love, teaching, as the children grew up. She was an active member of Trinity United Methodist Church where she volunteered in the church library. After Jack's death in 1981, Betty continued her love of travel, including an early trip to China as it opened up to Western visitors. She was a prolific diarist and photographer of the places and people she visited. The last two years of an adventuresome life were comfortable and peaceful in Betty's residence at the Laurel Skies Healthcare Center in Albuquerque. She was mentally alert, always happy, and adaptive to a gradual loss of physical strength, but never at a loss for a well-turned phrase or a humorous comment. Betty is survived by two daughters and a son: Ann James Paden of Bernalillo, New Mexico, Beth James Nicholson of Troy, New York, and Michael Forsythe James, of Houston, Texas. Her much-loved grandchildren and great-grandchildren are John Audu Paden, Amy Paden Yendrek, Michael Ford Nicholson, and Jennifer Nicholson Keneston; and their children, Olivia Paden, Erik Paden, Sophia Paden, and Shae Yendrek. The family extends all measure of gratitude to the administrators and, especially, the staff at Laurel Skies for their love and care for Betty, and to the Hospice of the Sandias for every caring service to her and to us in the last months. Memorial Services for the family will be held at a later date when cremated remains, as Betty wished, will be interred with those of her husband, Jack on a hillside at the National Cemetery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
        Published on: Thu May 31, 2007