By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

Betty Simpson has seen the Taj Mahal and ridden a camel in India. She’s photographed African warriors, and sailed to far-off ports.

As a child, she picked berries and fruit for her parents and their restaurant made out of Oregon logs, where such down home food as Southern fried chicken and homemade pies were served.

But she also hobnobbed with Hollywood movie stars and cruised with dignitaries long before she moved to Benicia to be near her daughter, Alexa Simpson.

And she’s been honored three times by Solano County during its centenarian celebration in Fairfield. Betty Simpson is 102.

While she needs some assistance, she still loves to stroll First Street to see other residents walking their dogs, to see the city’s waterfront, and to select a new batch of yarn for her lifelong hobby of knitting, her daughter said.

“She has quite an interesting story,” Alexa said. “My mom traveled all over the world in the 1930s.”

Betty grew up in Portland and Seaside, Oregon, and while she was there, her father, Earl C. Frost, served in the American Army during World War I, during which he was injured in an explosion that cost him much of his eyesight, Alexa said.

So he became a public speaker, generating public support of troops.

But he also was trained as a cook, and that led to the opening of the Wistaria, the restaurant 50 miles outside of Portland that was housed in an eight-sided log building and served Southern and home-style meals.

“Mom picked the berries and fruit for the pies,” Alexa said.

Later, the Frosts would be at the Seaside Hotel, she said.

When Betty was in junior high school and high school, her mother became superintendent and matron of a detention home, Frazier Home for Boys. The family lived at the home, and its teacher recognized Betty was unusually bright – as well as bored with public school.

So the instructor offered to tutor the child privately. It worked so well, Alexa said, that Betty entered Oregon State University at 15 as a journalism student. She soon was on the school’s newspaper staff.

Although she was far younger than her classmates, she was invited to join Alpha Xi Delta sorority, starting another lifelong passion for Betty.

“It was a very significant thing,” Alexa said. “My mom became national vice president after we were grown and gone. She worked her whole life for it.”

Betty participated in both state and regional levels of the sorority before becoming its advisor and consultant.

If a sorority had problems, Betty would visit the chapter and help it get back on track.

Her position in the sorority showed her vividly the advantage men had over women during that era.

Part of that advantage came through men’s fraternities, she observed, which not only gave young men the opportunity to network and make connections, they encouraged older members to mentor those entering the business world.

“They grabbed the coattails of the older members,” Alexa said.

Sororities weren’t doing the same at the time, Betty realized. “So she organized a network of sorority sisters, so they could give a hand up, too,” Alexa said.

The mentors were called “Alphie’s Angels,” taking the name from the first Greek letter in the sorority’s name, she said.

“I remember that well,” Alexa said. “She enrolled me in creating displays for the national convention. She was pro-active, an independent spirit, and she could relate to these women.”

Between accommodating a sister who wanted to attend college, too, and dealing with the impacts of the Great Depression, Betty didn’t finish college, even though she was in line to be the school paper’s editor and the senior officer in the sorority.

But in those years, Alexa said, “She blossomed. She was serenaded and courted, and a friend set her up on a date with a friend, Jack Crawford, of Beverly Hills. Within about seven months, Betty found herself the wife of a millionaire who owned an island off Santa Barbara and a ranch at Santa Ynez.

“They spent a couple of years traveling around the world,” Alexa said. “Her husband didn’t need to work.” The couple would sail or cruise with celebrities and dignitaries of the era. Betty brought her camera, snapping pictures that resembled National Geographic illustrations of the day.

“She has an album with spectacular photos,” Alexa said. And the excursions and journeys gave Betty “the travel bug.”

The marriage would last eight years. Betty desperately wanted children, but Crawford was not able to father them. “She was bored. She wasn’t happy. Radical as it was, she got a divorce.”

Betty enrolled in secretarial school, and upon completing her classes, went to Hollywood and was hired by Jesse L. Lasky, a pioneer of American motion pictures.

She also met a sorority sister, Maureen Drown, a family friend of Richard and Pat Nixon, who decided Betty “is a great catch.” Again, Betty was asked to go on an arranged date, this time with Bob Simpson.

However, Betty wanted to meet her date before they attended a big Hollywood black and white ball as blind dates. Bob agreed, and Betty cooked him dinner. “It wasn’t fair,” he later would tell friends. “I’m a goner!” Not only was Betty happy to go to the black and white ball, she later agreed to marry Bob.

The couple kept a secret with each other until Bob’s death. Betty had a “wardrobe malfunction” at that Hollywood ball, when her strapless gown slipped. She quickly pulled up the gown’s bodice.

Did Bob catch a peek? “I never asked him,” Betty said, “and he never discussed it.”

Bob served in World War II as an attorney and a counselor who advised discharged soldiers. When he returned from the war, he and Betty settled in San Bernadino and began rearing their children.

Betty still loved traveling, but this family couldn’t afford foreign trips except to Mexico.

“We spent our childhood camping,” Alexa recalled. “We had all the equipment. We were outdoorsy and adventuresome.” They would travel to Baja California, reduce the air in their car’s tires, and drive on the beach sand until they found a remote spot just for themselves. “We’d stay two weeks.”

The family grew to five, with Reed being born first, then Alexa and finally Brian.

After the children were grown, however, the couple ventured outside the United States. “They started traveling. They took a trip to China right after it opened to travel. They took extensive trips to China, Greece, Turkey, Bali and Thailand – fabulous trips.”

And these were adventure travels, Alexa said. The couple would take dancing tours, staying in villages to learn the local dances. They slept on temple floors while visiting the Yellow Leaf nomadic Mlabri tribe people of Thailand that move on when leaves begin to change from green to yellow.

Alexa and her mother had an adventure of their own in 1968 when the daughter was leaving India after spending some time living there. The two women realized they knew each other as mother-daughter, but not as individual women. “I wanted to know my mom as a person,” Alexa said.

She sent a message to her mother, telling her she was leaving India and heading for Greece. Betty dropped everything and flew to Athens, not realizing Alexa was traveling more slowly through Turkey, and arriving before the daughter.

But she knew the bus on which Alexa must travel would arrive daily, and she met the vehicle every day. Meanwhile, Alexa got word her mother already was in Athens, so she hocked her valuables for a plane ticket to Greece. She arrived, “and my mom was standing there.”

The pair hopped the Greek islands together, and during their adventures, Betty told Alexa her life story, including her time with Crawford. It was the first time Alexa heard her mother had been married before.

Betty and Bob would travel together until Bob’s death in 2001. Afterwards, Betty realized she should consider moving closer to her children. She had visited Alexa and liked Benicia’s look, and the number of residents who walked their dogs on First Street.

“My mother loves dogs,” Alexa said.

So she moved north, to the city where her daughter is a health care worker, yoga instructor and artistic jewelry-maker.

She soon began volunteering at Benicia Public Library, where she joined the Friends of the Library and assisted staff with shelving books until she was 98, when she retired. She still likes to walk to the library, Alexa said.

Betty is still active, and mother and daughter have adjusted to the loss of Alexa’s car, stolen last December as Alexa planned to take Betty to Benicia’s marina. “I went out, and there’s no car,” she said. The thief was caught, but the car was trashed.

Alexa has chosen not to replace it, and has started her own adventure of living without a motor vehicle. “I took it as a challenge,” she said. When Betty needs a ride, they call the para-transit bus.

Betty has kept up her own interests, Alexa said.

“She plays jazz piano. She’s always been fond of jazz. And she’s a dancer, a ballroom dancer.” She puts on some music and waltzes away.

She’s also fond of reading New Yorker Magazine, and working puzzles.

And she still knits. “She’s always been a knitter. She’s got new projects. We’ll go to Fiber-Frolics on First Street, and we’ll choose some yarn and select a new project.”