Betty Ann Reed

Betty Ann Ardoin Reed died Sunday, March 28, 2021, at the age of eighty-eight, at the home her oldest daughter, Aleta Meyer, in New Braunfels, Texas. She had been living there since Hurricane Laura hit Lake Charles. 

Betty was born on June 15, 1932, in Mamou, LA, the seventh of eight children. She spoke French at home and learned English at school. Her beloved mother, Lydia Vezinat Ardoin, a cook, raised the six children who survived childhood as a single mother. Although poor, Lydia's home was filled with love. Her grandmother, Onezia Fontenot Vezinat, lived nearby and they were very close.   She never missed a movie at Mamou's theatre and had fond memories of crawfishing with her younger brother, Huey (using their toes as bait!), and cooling off at the irrigation pump. She proudly said she had the first new bicycle in Mamou after World War II. 

In 1949, at age seventeen, Betty moved to Houston and worked at the Shamrock Hotel. She met many celebrities of the day, from Frank Sinatra to Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. She was the elevator operator for both Generals Eisenhower and MacArthur. General Eisenhower told her about his days at Camp Polk and called her his Cajun Beauty. She also volunteered at the recently opened Alley Theatre.

Betty met her husband, Roland, through a friend in early 1955. Although he was also from Mamou, they didn't know each other, but knew all the same people. They were married at St. Margaret Catholic Church in Lake Charles on Christmas Day, 1955. Roland was in the Air Force at that time and they lived in Lafayette, Jennings, Moss Bluff, and then Lake Charles.   Aleta Maria was born in 1956, Lydian Dawn in 1958, and Damon Brett in 1960. They still owned the Lake Charles home they bought in 1963 at the time of their deaths. 

In the early 1970's, when Walgreens opened its first store in Lake Charles at the Southgate Shopping Center on Ryan Street, Betty was hired in the cosmetics department. She worked there for about ten years, and loved talking to her customers and helping them with their makeup.

Besides her family and her home, Betty's passions were reading, gardening, and travelling. When macular degeneration robbed her of her freedom to drive and ability to read, she checked out audio books at the library. She was a frequent visitor with 'her secretary', Roland, who kept track of the books she listened to in her notebooks. She loved flowers and always had many varieties, and shade trees, in the yard. Betty saw most of the continental United States by car with her family. She also travelled to Europe and beyond -- three times with Roland and six times with her daughters and granddaughter. She used her French in Quebec, France, Belgium and Monaco with no problem at all. She also helped start a grassroots campaign, about thirty years ago, to end forced heirship in Louisiana.

Betty is preceded in death by her husband of sixty-four years, Roland. He died in August, 2020. Her beloved mother, Lydia Vezinat Ardoin, died in 1955. All of her siblings -- Pearlie, Elizabeth, Gordon, Floyd and Huey -- preceded her in death, as did her father, Lova Ardoin, and her great granddaughter, Sophie Marie Sims. Left to cherish her memory are her three children, Aleta Meyer, and Lydian and Damon Reed; grandchildren Jaclyn King (Chad), and Camille and Travis Meyer; great grandchildren Connor Sims, and Wade and Wyatt King; and, many nieces and nephews.

Her children would like to thank the employees at the Calcasieu Parish Library on Ernest Street for all the help they provided her for years, after her macular degeneration diagnosis. They ordered audio books for her from all over the United States. They would also like to thank Heart of Hospice in Lake Charles for their kind care after her stroke in 2017, and Hope Hospice in New Braunfels, TX, for their kind care over the past seven months. Memorials can be made to the library or either hospice.

Johnson Funeral Home is handling arrangements. There will be a viewing at University Baptist Church, 4505 Lake Street at McNeese Street in Lake Charles, from 12:00pm - 3:00pm on Monday, April 12. At 2:00pm, visitors can share memories of Betty. Burial will be at 3:00 at Consolata.