Bettye Lou Lowery

Bettye Richison never had a music lesson. Her parents couldn’t afford it. Born on Jan. 4, 1928, Bettye grew up in Oklahoma during the Great Depression. Her mother, Zelma, cared for the family – two boys and two girls – while her father, William, worked in a cleaning shop. “Good old American people,” Bettye calls them.

Bettye started high school in Oklahoma, where books and materials were free. When her family moved to Arizona, Bettye found that things were different.

“I went up to the office on the first day of school,” she said. “I was trembling. I was scared. I told them I was new in town and needed to go to school. They starting filling out the papers and told me how much it would cost.” Puzzled, Bettye explained that school had been free in Oklahoma. “It’s not free here, they told me,” she said. “When they told me how much it was, I said thank you and walked out because I didn’t have any money for books or gym clothes or anything.”

After leaving the school, Bettye “walked into downtown Phoenix and got a job running an elevator for a men’s club on the ninth floor of the Luhrs building at night. I went to work that day.”

Still in her teens, Bettye got a daytime job next – then another. “I just went from one job to another job – whichever one suited me the best,” she says. “I was just trying to get through life, making money to take care of my needs because my mother and dad were pretty poor.”

When Bettye turned 16, she met the man who would become her husband. “I met Jim Lowery at the roller rink near our home,” she remembers. “He was 19. We knew we wanted to get married so we did it. We didn’t tell anybody. We ran away to Florence, Arizona, and got married. Then we came back and I had to tell mother and dad.”

The runaway marriage lasted 52 years.

During World War II, Jim worked as a millwright at AiResearch Manufacturing Company. After the war, he took work wherever he could find it. Eventually, he went to work for the 7 Up Bottling Company and was ultimately promoted to manager.

Bettye and Jim had five children. Today, their son, Jim, and his wife, Anette, live in San Diego, California. Daughter Laura D’Angelo and her husband, Pat Murphy, live in Hillsboro, Oregon. Daughter Linda and her husband, Ron Archer, live in Las Vegas, Nevada. Son Marty and his wife, Nora, live in Tigard, Oregon. Daughter Paula and her husband, John Beaulieu, live in Beaverton, Oregon. “I’m proud of every one of them,” Bettye says. The family now includes 10 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.

Bettye and Jim moved to Oregon after visiting their daughter, Paula, and her husband, John. After battling cancer and being in total remission, Jim Lowery unexpectedly died in his sleep about 15 years ago.

“I could hear music in my head”

When Bettye was growing up, she would “sit down whenever I saw a piano and play a song with one finger. I wouldn’t give up,” she says. “That’s how I learned.”

Years later, Jim bought a piano for Bettye. “I wanted to learn more,” she says. “Pretty soon, I’d just pick out a song and try to play it.”

In the early 1970s, Bettye was sitting at a typewriter one day. As she remembers it, “All of a sudden, the words to a song started floating through my mind.” She got up and went to the piano and played the tune with one finger to be sure that she would remember it.

“I couldn’t read music,” she says. “I couldn’t write music. But I could hear music in my head. So I would memorize everything and try to pick it out on the piano.”

Eventually, a friend put Bettye’s music and lyrics onto paper. “I went to the printer and had copies made because I never wanted to lose it,” Bettye says. “After that, it seemed like new songs kept coming every other day or so.”

Bettye estimates that she wrote between 15 and 20 songs in the decades from the 1970s to the 1990s. “I give all the credit to God,” she says. “I couldn’t have done it all by myself.”

Bettye also credits God for the poems that she has written since she was young. “I get my inspiration from God,” she says. “I had no education, really. I dropped out in the 10th grade. But I always wanted to play piano so I tried to do what I could.”

Bettye loves all of her songs. But, when asked if she has a favorite, she cites “On That Great and Wonderful Day.” That song is special to her – not only because it was her first – but because it has resonated so deeply with others.

Ten years ago, Bettye was diagnosed with autoimmune retinopathy, a rare eye disease. She has slowly lost her eyesight and is now blind.

Last year, Bettye’s family reached out to Jeremy Thom, worship pastor at Meadow Springs Community Church in Portland. Paula and John Beaulieu are members of that church. The family asked Thom if he would record some of Bettye’s songs so she could hear how they sound on instruments other than the piano.

After recording the song and sending it to Bettye, Jeremy Thom arranged for it to be performed during a Sunday church service with Bettye listening in the pews. It was the first time she had heard any of her songs performed by professional musicians.

“My heart just melted,” she says. “I couldn’t believe I wrote it. They played it so beautifully. It was wonderful.” She adds, “I’m so grateful to them for playing it for me and for the public – letting everybody hear it. It just made my heart swell up.”

That performance caught the attention of the Tigard Times newspaper. Since the story appeared, the song was performed a second time at the church.

http://portlandtribune.com/bvt/15-news/231645-95370-tigard-area-church-offers-music-to-lift-the-soul-and-heart-of-beaverton-writer

Bettye Lowery has been living at Maryville for about three years. She no longer plays the piano but still loves music.

When she thinks about her own music, Bettye also thinks about her father – and that special song. “He only heard my first song,” she says. “But, the last time I saw him, he told me ‘Whatever you do, Bettye Lou, keep on writing songs for the Lord.’”

Audio Feature:

The first public performance of “On That Great and Wonderful Day.” Music and lyrics by Bettye Lowery. Copyright 1973. All rights reserved. Recording courtesy of Meadow Springs Community Church.

http://www.maryville.care/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2015/12/Bettye-Lowery-song-live.mp3

Audio Feature:

The second public performance of “On That Great and Wonderful Day.” Music and lyrics by Bettye Lowery. Copyright 1973. All rights reserved. Recording courtesy of Meadow Springs Community Church.

http://www.maryville.care/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2015/12/Bettye-Lowery-On-That-Great-and-Wonderful-Day.mp3

Video Feature: In her own words: an interview with composer Bettye Lowery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yyyS7sQ3CM