Betty-Gene C. Cull

It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Betty-Gene C. Cull, who passed on February 15, 2025, at the age of 83. Born on February 1, 1942, in Lebanon, New Hampshire, Betty was the beloved child of Elizabeth Jackson Corcoran and Eugene Joseph Corcoran.

Raised in Springfield, Vermont with siblings Pamela and Kevin. Betty-Gene attended Springfield High School, later graduating in 1960. After graduating from SHS, she attended University of Vermont, graduating in 1964 with a B.S. in education.

From 1964 through 1969-70 school year, Betty-Gene taught at Whitingham School in Jacksonville, VT (K-12 physical education and coached four high school girls' sports: field hockey, basketball, gymnastics, and softball.) One of the most satisfying accomplishments during those years: her girls' basketball team won the Molly Stark Trail League championship in 1970, after four years of finishing second.

From 1962 through 1969, Betty worked summers as head counselor at Camp Che¬Na-Wah girls' camp in the Adirondacks of NY.

In June 1970, She married David Cull and they moved to Colorado, where Dave worked for H.W. Moore Equipment Company and she was a GTA at Colorado State University while working on a master's degree in physical education, Betty completed everything required for the degree except the thesis, which became a secondary concern to her after their son, Michael, was born in July 1971. She never did complete the thesis so did not earn the M.S.

In 1973 David's work took them to Casper, Wyoming. While there they were able to do a lot of camping and fishing. Betty chose to concentrate on being a mom instead of returning to teaching. In 1978 David changed jobs and they moved to Spokane, Washington. They were there when Mount Saint Helens erupted in May 1980- quite an experience with lots of ash blanketing everything, even though they lived on the extreme eastern part of the state.

While in Spokane, Betty-Gene became involved in volunteering at Mike's elementary school, which rekindled her love for working with kids and made her realize she missed teaching. The family moved back to Colorado in 1982, as David changed jobs again. He then had surgery for atherosclerosis, and in 1986 suffered a major fatal heart attack.

Before this unexpected and traumatic event, with Mike being in 4" grade when they returned to Colorado, Betty had taken some classes at Metro State College in Denver and received her Colorado teaching certificate. After putting in a year of general substitute teaching, She landed a couple of long¬term sub jobs in special education. These led to a full-time position teaching "pull-out" classes (language arts, math, social studies and study/life skills) for learning disabled students at Shaw Heights Junior High School in Westminster, CO. During her first three years at Shaw I also worked (night and summer classes) on a master's degree in Learning Disabilities. This master's she did complete and received the degree in 1987.

In the mid-1980s, Shaw Heights transformed into a middle school, and the trend became "mainstreaming" the special ed. kids, with Betty-Gene being a "collab/consult" teacher (in regular ed. classes to try to help the special ed. kids survive and hopefully be successful). She was frustrated at not being able to actually teach her own classes. However, She especially enjoyed being in the science classrooms with the 8th graders. For the 1991-92 school year, the opportunity arose for her to do collab/consult half of each day and actually teach "regular ed." Science classes the other half. (She qualified due to her many undergraduate and postgraduate science classes.) Since "collab/consult" was not really teaching in her opinion, she jumped at the opportunity. She did a good job because the following year she was able to drop the special ed. and become strictly a full-time 8th grade science teacher. Betty had finally found her niche! She ended up teaching 8th grade science for the next 16 years at Shaw until retiring at the end of the 2008- 09 school year.

Education and kids have changed a lot over the years, in her opinion. She had many wonderful students (She still kept in contact with quite a few-as far back as her first years at Whitingham). Betty-Gene thoroughly enjoyed so many of her teaching experiences, especially at Whitingham and teaching the science at Shaw. She did not miss the recent years' emphasis on excessive testing in education or the apathetic attitudes of too many "modern day" kids. What she did miss was the actual science teaching (inquiry experiments and labs, demos, seeing the "light go on" as kids solve problems or figure out why scientific events happened, and things like that).

She thoroughly enjoyed being retired and having time to read (for pleasure, not work), play on the computer (she loved the Shockwave website puzzles and games), and do what she wanted when she wanted (and not do anything if she didn't).

She was (since 1970) an avid BRONCOS fan, but enjoyed watching pretty much any football (pros and college), baseball (Yay, Rockies!) and basketball (go Nuggets!). She still followed the Red sox and Celtics and rooted for them (except when they played the Rockies or Nuggets). She did not root for the Patriots. She also watched golf, the Tour de France, Olympics - She was just a sports nut," I guess!

She wasn't much of a traveler, but she thoroughly enjoyed her trip back East during the summer of 2011. It was so wonderful seeing so many of her great SHS classmates! Her Class of '60 was special!

Betty-Gene will be deeply missed by all the lives she impacted through her 83 years, but will be remembered by them always.