Being there for Betty

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DENVER - When the United States was drawn into World War II, Betty Lantz was there for the women in the U.S. Army that she trained. Betty was a drill instructor and did everything she could to give the soldiers she trained the best chance to survive.

Steve DeBoer remembers Betty's war stories.

"She spoke about the fact that she was a drill instructor with the women's Army Corps and that she was whipping these gals into shape so that they would survive, so that they'd get through it back then," he said.

Years later, Betty found herself at age 89 alone in the veteran's home at Fitzsimmons. All of her family and friends had passed before her. The woman who had been there for the U.S. Army, her family and friends now needed someone to be there for her.

She found them.

When the Patriot Guard, a veterans group, made one of their regular visits to the veterans home, one of their members saw Betty and asked her a question.

"He asked her how she was doing and she basically asked him in some pretty crusty language, what business was it of his anyway," DeBoer, the state captain of the Patriot Guard, said. "He decided this was a gal we needed to get to know."

That chance meeting blossomed into a friendship that led Patriot Guard members to return and visit Miss Betty, as they came to call her, time and again. The Patriot Guard regularly brings ice cream to residents at the veterans home.

Miss Betty, true to her independent spirit, asked them to bring her something other than ice cream. She wanted a beer.

"This was a gal that lived life on her own terms and with her own rules and if you didn't like 'em, she didn't care," DeBoer said.

It was that personality and independent streak that endeared her to the Patriot Guard members. Dawn Rehbein, a Patriot Guard member, saw another side of Miss Betty.

"She was very sad to be by herself," Rehbein said. "She said she was so afraid to pass away by herself."

So when it appeared that moment was drawing near, her Patriot Guard family grew nearer.

In the pre-dawn hours of Good Friday, three members of the Patriot Guard, Ray Hoskinson, and Dawn and Randy Rehbein, sat with Miss Betty as she prepared to die. They held her hand, talked with her, and let her know that she was not alone.

The Patriot Guard members had been there for Miss Betty in life. They were there for her when she died and they were there again for her as she was laid to rest.

As a steady snow fell on Fort Logan National Cemetery on Friday, the Patriot Guard escorted Miss Betty's hearse to her final resting place. Guard members served as her pallbearers.

They gave her a military funeral, complete with a 21 gun salute from an honor guard and a final playing of taps.

As the Patriot Guard members stood under the falling snow, they laughed at what Miss Betty would be saying.

"She is laughing right now because this is kind of symbolic of her personality and she was a stormy woman," Dawn Rehbein said.

As she watched the snow fall, Rehbein laughed and said, "This is all her. This is all her doing."