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Betty (Skelton) Norman
Honor Code SignatorySigned 15 Oct 2019 | 39,539 contributions | 3,713 thank-yous | 2,764 connections
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Betty was born in 1939 in Anderson, South Carolina. She was the first child of Harold Skelton and Reed Banister. In 1957, she graduated from Hanna High School and married John McGougan. They had two sons: Marshall and Joe.
While the boys were still babies, Betty found a job. Relocations and other events caused the jobs to change, and Betty found herself working as a bank teller, a bookkeeper for a cotton merchant, manager of a cotton warehouse (10 buildings), assistant to a marketing manager, and finally... a computer programmer. The first computer she programmed was an IBM 1130, until recently housed in a museum and touted as IBM's first mini-computer. The computer business was her niche! She learned and grew with the times, went back to school to earn a B.S. in Mathematics and Business, and eventually ended up at Digital Equipment Corporation, working as a second level (district) manager.
Before DEC went out of business, Betty found herself in Dallas, Texas, married to her second husband, Jay Norman. The two of them pooled their resources and started a small business. It grew and became successful and they eventually sold the business. Now they are active retirees, and enjoying life.
Besides genealogy, Betty spends her days hawk- and eagle-watching. She is a raptor enthusiast, and has participated as a moderator for several Bald Eagle, Red-tailed Hawk, and Cooper's Hawk nest cams.
Between the two of them, Betty and Jay have an extended family of two sons, three daughters, and nine grandchildren. Betty now has the distinction of being the oldest living member of both the paternal and the maternal sides of her family. It's high time someone put together her family history for the generations to come! And that's her story!
Little Betty moved with her family from Anderson to Greenville to Gaffney back to Greenville and back to Anderson, as her father met the changing needs of his job and helped to mobilize the home front in the face of World War II. Betty sat on her father's shoulders and watched as Franklin Delano Roosevelt's casket, displayed in an open rail car, rolled slowly by. Then, when the war was over, she was part of the celebration, screaming and throwing confetti and hanging out the car window. She knew that now Mother can bake pies again, but Uncle Ray won't be coming home.
Betty grew up in the Happy Days. She rode a bicycle everywhere, walked on homemade stilts for hours, roller-skated on the streets and sidewalks, and developed callouses on her hands from climbing the big rope swing in the back yard. A coca cola cost a dime, and a box of jello 5 cents and it lasted all day. There was no charge to swim in the recreation center pool, and that's where she spent many of her days. "Betty, be home in time for supper!" "Yes, Mother!" Happy Days.
* Paternal relationship is confirmed by an AncestryDNA test match between Betty Skelton and her second cousin J.S. Their most-recent common ancestors are their (respective) great grandparents and great-great grandparents, Samuel Augustus Skelton and Susannah Elizabeth Roof. Predicted relationship from AncestryDNA: 2nd Cousins 1x removed, based on sharing 147 cM across 7 segments; Confidence: Extremely High.
* Maternal relationship is confirmed by an AncestryDNA test match between Betty Skelton and her first cousin, Judith Mancini. Their most-recent common ancestors are their grandparents, Ira Reed Banister and Ella Monteria Todd. Predicted relationship from AncestryDNA: 1st cousins, based on sharing 1,044 cM across 41 segments; Confidence: Extremely High.
Personal ethnicity per Ancestry.com DNA test:
53% - England & Northwestern Europe
36% - Scotland
6% - Wales
3% - Norway
1% - Jewish
1% - Native (Indigenous) North American
This week's featured connections are Redheads: Betty is 19 degrees from Catherine of Aragón, 20 degrees from Clara Bow, 28 degrees from Julia Gillard, 14 degrees from Nancy Hart, 12 degrees from Rutherford Hayes, 16 degrees from Rita Hayworth, 18 degrees from Leonard Kelly, 18 degrees from Rose Leslie, 17 degrees from Damian Lewis, 19 degrees from Maureen O'Hara, 25 degrees from Jopie Schaft and 35 degrees from Eirik Thorvaldsson on our single family tree. Login to see how you relate to 33 million family members.
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