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PART FIVE

By Brendan Hancock
Edited by Matthew J Schelle

Originally Written for The Australian Rock & Roll Appreciation Society in 2005

PART FIVE of EIGHT

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Over the course of the year since her first encounter with the holy spirit, Bettie found her purpose in life was to serve god and now needed a way to express her new found salvation. Although her change in lifestyle was well underway, another change of address was on the cards.

Bettie packed her bags with her home town of Nashville in her sights, leaving not only her new friends at the Baptist church but a crying and pleading Arnold behind.  She wasn’t in Nashville for long until she was mobile again, this time moving in with her brother Jimmie in Gardena California.

Soon Bettie was on the job hunt again, this time modelling was definitely out of the question. After an unsuccessful church secretary job interview at the First Methodist church, Bettie befriended some girls near the building who turned out to be students from the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. It didn’t take long for Bettie to renew an interest she once had for bible studies which can be traced back to conversations Bettie had with a Sunday school teacher from Ohio.

The Very next morning, Bettie arose early and enrolled, although financially embarrassed, the Bible school showed their own faith in her by giving her a non-interest loan to carry out tuition and living expenses.

Bettie began attending night classes and soon had a job as a secretary for a local Christian radio station, yet by the end of the spring semester Bettie started to feel slightly bored and restless again. On the advice of some fellow christian friends she moved to Chicago and enrolled in summer school at the Moody Bible Institute. She made her home via student housing and right away began taking personal evangelism and bible synthesis.

During June of 1961, famous, almost godlike crusader the Reverend Billy Graham came to town to spread the word of god to forty thousand townspeople who packed out the local McCormick Place Stadium every night for three weeks.

Due to the reverend’s popularity and the money his crusades generated, Graham was also known for sponsoring bible students of which Bettie Page hoped she could be one of them. For three weeks Bettie worked nights that summer as a counsellor for the Billy Graham crusade, spreading his message to people all over the town. The satisfaction and acceptance from all those she dealt with solidified her growing ambition to become a missionary and preach the word of god to all those around the world who have yet to hear it.

The next year Bettie gathered all of the money she had saved from her secretary work and signed up for a thirty day bible retreat at Winona Lake Indiana. There she got an even better understanding in the ways of the bible through various peoples interpretations and group readings against the backdrop of beautiful forest and crystal clear lakes. This tranquil environment appealed to Bettie so much that she visited the retreat for the next four years.

By 1963 Bettie’s dream of becoming a missionary was still as strong and even though she had already been turned down by the missionary board, she was convinced this was the path god wanted her to take.

“I had wanted to be a missionary, but no mission board would take me since I had been divorced,”

She had returned home to Nashville after she received news that her father Roy was sick. Now forty years old, this would be the first time in twenty years that Bettie would finally settle down back home, even if it was for a year.

 

During the course of that year she taught sunday school class and kept herself financially stable by a secretary job for the office manager at the Benson printing company who was a publisher of high school books.

Bettie visited her sick father on a regular basis, The once strong man was now stricken with diabetes. Being the stubborn man that he was, had only acted upon the disease after both his legs had been amputated and the doctors have giving him only months to live.

Bettie still had the driving ambition to become a missionary and realising that being divorced would be the biggest hurdle in pursuing her dreams, she realised the answer to her problem would be to call up her first husband Billy Neal.

Billy was invited up to Bettie’s new apartment and accepted, he had been working at the local post office for nearly a decade and since the break up with Bettie, had met and married another woman which also led to divorce.

Ironically the other woman’s name was also Betty. Unbeknownst to Bettie, he had a six year old daughter from a second marriage.

But none of that bothered her she had a dream to fulfil and nothing was going to stop her, so Bettie got straight to point and asked Billy to remarry her.

Although initially taking aback from the shock question, first love dies the hardest and Billy said yes.

Bettie told her about her marriage to Armond, who had not long before called her about his own plans of marrying again, this time with a girl who was pregnant with his child. But in order to do the right thing, he needed a divorce from Bettie.

For once everything seemed to be falling into place and becoming almost full circle, Bettie agreed with Armond’s request to finalise the divorce. It would be the last time the two former lovers would be in contact with each other. Armond died just a decade later.

Bettie and Billy agreed that it would be nice to get married at the Gallatin Courthouse, the same location for their first marriage twenty years before.

Almost instantly Bettie moved into Billy’s house with the majority of her belongings consisting of religious books and texts, which is said to fill a room.

As soon as she was settled she demanded that Billy quit his job at the post office and join her in her crusade of becoming a Christian missionary.

The master plan that Bettie has been working on for many years was beginning to surface. Upon finding out that she was once divorced, Teachers, peers and especially mentors from all of the bible houses and colleges she attended said that if she could bring Billy into the arms of the church, they would see to it that they would be remarried.

Bettie took the remarrying upon her self firstly and thought she could work on Billy’s conversion to Christianity second.

Billy loved her dearly and he would do just about anything in the world to make Bettie happy, but becoming a fully fledged missionary would mean a complete different way of life and with it no financial security. Both Bettie and Billy weren’t getting any younger and if he left his stable job at the post office, Billy would also lose his pension.

Although he refused Bettie’s request to become a missionary, it didn’t stop her from lecturing him about the word of god and the bible every night, and made him attend church on the weekends. Her determination to convert Billy only lead to tension, this tension and the death of her father in January 1964 made way for random fierce fighting that usually came from nowhere and without instigation.

This would leave Billy slightly confused and the thought of her maybe having some sort of split personality had well and truly be planted.

“She could be so loving one day, and the next day-and it wouldn’t be me that was making her mad, it would be something else a lot of times. When she was mad, she was mad at everybody.”

Her passion for becoming a missionary was as strong as ever, even if she felt Billy wasn’t supporting it. Using a federal loan from the national Department of Education by making out she was the daughter of a wounded war veteran, In 1964 she enrolled again at the George Peabody college for teachers to work on her master’s degree thinking that having it on a resume should give her the advantage with the missionary board.

Billy disagreed with Bettie going back to school and felt now more than ever with both in their forty’s that Bettie’s place should be at home, the final fight between the newly re-wedded happened not two months after they exchanged I do’s for the second time. Billy had brought his daughter home for a visit for the three of them to spend some quality time together. Bettie had other plans; she told Billy that she was going to another bible lecture. This was the final straw and flew into a violent rage. He demanded Bettie to stay home with him and his daughter.

Bettie left Billy the next day and moved into a small apartment slightly closer to the Peabody school campus. She would never speak to Billy ever again.

Bettie continued to study for the next two years but wasn’t recommended for a master degree after she has failed to complete two history courses.

The desire to become a teacher again came and quickly disappeared and dream of becoming a missionary was beginning to fade also. Again Bettie felt the need to escape the negativity around her and sought refuge to the place where she could wash it all away…Miami.

Bettie moved back to sunny Miami and it didn’t take long for the adventurous Bettie to leave all her emotional troubles and explore what Miami had to offer. On one particular warm August night, Bettie went to the Palace ballroom, a post world war 2 dance hall which still featured a bandstand and shiny black and white marble floors. The ballroom attracted singles and divorcees looking for love and little did Bettie know Bettie was about to meet the next man in her life.

He was Harry Lear, a short forty-three year old man, who worked for the Florida Bell (phone company) by day and drove the body van of the local funeral home by night.

Harry was new to the singles scene and being at the Palace on this night was his first time, the world war two veteran had not long left his wife and kids after he found his wife in bed with a fireman. A simple no frills kinda guy, Harry’s eyes couldn’t stop from sourcing out Bettie and he knew he had never met her before, but she did look awfully familiar.

Harry got the courage up and asked her to dance, she introduced herself as Bettie and the two fell in love from there.

PART FIVE of EIGHT

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