Dates

• Existence: 1927-

Biography

Bette Brooks Stone was born in 1927 in Mapleton, Iowa to Beulah and Earl Brooks. The Brooks family raised six additional children: Bob, Marian, Shirley, Jimmy, Janet, and Barbara Brooks. Bette Brooks attended Mapleton High School during World War II and was active as a drum majorette, basketball player, softball player and member of a girls' vocal sextet that earned its way to state competition. She participated in a number of scrap drives and worked at the Office of Price Administration distributing rationing stamps. Following her graduation from high school in 1945, Brooks traveled to Omaha, Nebraska to train at the Western Union headquarters. She then moved to Chicago, where she spent the next two years sending telegrams for Western Union. She shared an apartment with other Western Union operators and spent her free time visiting museums and meeting servicemen. She met her husband James Stone in March of 1946 and married him on Thanksgiving Day of the same year. Jim and Bette Stone raised five children, and Bette Stone worked sporadically through the years including a stint at Oak Electro/Netics Corporation in the mid 1960s. Bette Stone and her husband retired in Mapleton ,Iowa.

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