Betty Iris Ware Wentz

Betty Iris Ware Wentz, 88, of Wilmington passed away on Friday, April 10, 2015 at Lower Cape Fear Hospice and Life Care Center. She was born on August 11, 1926 in Kings Mountain, North Carolina to the late Arnold Hunter and Eunice Geneva Ware. Betty is also preceded in death by her husband, a decorated WWII bomber pilot James Ira Wentz in 1951 as well as her one year old baby brother Bobby Hunter Ware on Christmas Day 1933. Betty is survived by her two children, Barbara O'Neal (Elliott) of Wilmington, with whom she had made her home for the last three years, and James Ira Wentz, Jr. of Greensboro. She is also survived by two grandsons: James Elliott O'Neal (Sheri), and William Christopher O'Neal (Catherine) of Charlotte. Betty has two great-grandsons, William Kendrick O'Neal and James Wyatt O'Neal both of Charlotte. While in high school, Betty was chosen to attend GIRL'S STATE at Women's College in Greensboro. She played the clarinet in the awarding winning High School Marching Band and skipped her Senior Year to attend Western Carolina College in the western NC mountains at Cullowee. She had quickly learned to love the mountains at an early age when visiting the summers with her parents at Lake Junaluska. For her Junior and Senior Years of college, she transferred to Wake Forest College during the first year that women were admitted on campus. She graduated from there in June 1947 and married the Wake Forest man of her dreams in September 1947 to make their home in Danville, Virginia. Upon her husband's sudden death in 1951, Betty brought her two babies to Wilmington to be close to her parents. When her children became school age, Betty began teaching Sunset Junior High School's accelerated 7th grade students before transferring 15 years later to teach science to 7th and 8th grade students at Noble Junior High School. In all, she taught 32 years in New Hanover County. Her first goal in retirement was devoted to caregiving her mother and then her father. She was always thinking of others above herself. And in the end, as her alzheimer progressed, the light of her beautiful spirit shown brighter and brighter to the end. Betty left her family an extraordinary and inspiring legacy teaching us God's Fruits of the Spirit in her own quiet way. Burial is planned in the family plot in Kings Mountain on Monday April 13, 2015 at 10:00 AM. Plans for a memorial service here in Wilmington will be announced at a later date by Andrews Mortuary. The family requests in lieu of flowers that a donation would be appreciated in her memory to the Lower Cape Fear Hospice and Life Care Center @ www.LCFH.org, the American Heart Association @ www.heart.org/dear, Alzheimer's Association @ m.alz.org/donate.asp, a charity of one's choice.