Betty MacGuire died last week. The news was not unexpected. Betty was 101. Several years ago, Betty’s best friend, Aurie West, told me that once Betty stopped flying down to Marfa every Thursday for their bridge game and returning to El Paso after church and a nap on Sunday, they spoke on the phone every week. Aurie told me with great sadness that, lately, Betty was slowly more unsure of who she was speaking with, so we knew she was slipping away. These friends were losing the grip on very long and happily entwined lives. Both of their rancher husbands were gone. However, those two carried on like well-behaved teenagers — who enjoyed good red wine. Then unexpectedly Aurie was gone. Pneumonia.
Betty told me their husbands got on as famously as the two of them did, which meant many great adventures and evenings together. This, she assured me, was very unusual. Aurie lived her entire life in Marfa, except the years in a boarding school, from which she and her husband eloped — which got her sent back to Marfa, and an annulment. She said she behaved as badly as only a teenager can, which caused her parents to relent. She was remarried to that same young man until his death. The two ranching couples shared their lives.
I didn’t know anything of Betty being the force behind an orphanage in El Paso, until a gentleman visited Marfa who had been on the board there for 30-some years filled me in. Nor did I know Betty had been an orphan. She was not one to talk about herself. She did tell me about the guy who tried to steal her plane, right here on the ranch in Marfa, and when they caught up with him he had the engine going. Her stories were lighthearted with happy endings. Betty never mentioned she trained as a pilot during World War II, until someone else mentioned it and I brought it up. By the time I met Betty she was no longer flying herself down to Marfa; she hired a pilot, much to the relief of her friends.
After learning about Betty’s involvement with the orphanage, she told me about a new project she had started in El Paso to help young people aging out of the foster system. She said many of the foster families were not good people, who turned the kids out into the street at the end of their time. She wanted to help these kids who found themselves suddenly stranded. She established a place for them to come for all sorts of support, money for housing, computers to use for college applications and jobs and every other thing she could think of to help them transition to life on their own. What a vision with the heart and will to back it up.
I loved being around them. They shone and kindness and wit spilled around them. As the years went on, I cut up Betty’s meal for her and placed a pillow behind her as she began to shrink in stature. Their friendship was a superpower to behold. Learning from these two ranchers was a gift to me that I will cherish forever, in spite of how much I miss them both and the ability to call them up when I hear a rumor and want to know the truth.