Maribel Grace Blatter

Maribel Grace (“Billie”) Blatter was born in Long Beach, California on February 17, 1923 to John and Edice Stanke. She was the second of three sisters. The family lived briefly in Ventura, but it was Santa Barbara that she would come to call home, within walking distance of the beach. She was an excellent swimmer, once swimming with Esther Williams. She loved acting as a young person, and starred in plays in high school and in two years of college. She also loved nature, particularly wildflowers and animals, and supported animal rights organizations her whole life. Another passion was snorkeling, and she was able to make trips to Hawaii, Bora-Bora and Tahiti in her middle years.

Her first marriage was to Ed Lockhart, the father of her daughter Jeanne. Although the marriage did not last, his mother Augusta and two sisters, Ann and Grace, remained in their lives and were an important influence on Jeanne.

Billie married Ted Blatter in 1956. They moved to Anaheim and had a happy and stable marriage until his death in 2007.

Billie worked in accounting in the oil industry for many years, and took great pleasure in balancing accounts to the penny. When she retired from Westates in 1964, they asked her to continue on a consulting basis.

When Ted retired in 1991, they bought a house in Las Vegas, where they had always enjoyed gambling and vacationing. Billie applied her great memory and sharp mind for figures to the game of blackjack, and the zippered leather pouch she kept in her purse generally had a pretty good stash of hundred-dollar bills from her winnings to show for it!

Speaking of purses and hundred-dollar bills, Billie was smart and independent-minded and had always handled the family finances, so there was no problem with her living on her own from that point of view, but macular degeneration stole her central vision and made driving dicey and eventually illegal. Because of that and other health problems, she eventually agreed to move to California in January 2011, as had her sister Janet in October 2010, to be looked after by her niece Jana. She and Janet leased houses in Sun City, Lincoln, but a fall on ice in December 2013 shattered her pelvis and she was no longer able to live independently and so she moved with her little cat, Dolly, into Eskaton, a very nice assisted living facility in Roseville, where she lived until her death on January 8, 2018. The old girl maintained her faculties until her final days.

She is survived by her daughter Jeanne Freeland, her grandson John West and great-grandsons Julian West and Ethan West.

The family is forever indebted to Jana Atkins and her husband Roger Atkins for the loving care Billie received from them; for their sweet and creative devotion far beyond the call of duty.

Should anyone feel moved to make donations in her name in lieu of flowers, the family suggests Best Friends in Utah, or a local animal shelter.