Col. Catherine Betz, 92, decorated Army nurse
Collingswood High graduate Col. Catherine Betz built a distinguished career while serving in the Army. She retired after serving more than 30 years, earning many honors and medals for her service during combat and peace.
Col. Catherine Betz had a love of the Army that was surpassed only by her love for others.
When a badly burned baby boy was left at St. Elizabeth's Orphanage in Saigon, the career military nurse became his godmother, cradling the Vietnamese child for his baptism, according to newspaper accounts. Her commander was godfather. The godparents and troops sent money to the orphanage for the boy's education until the fall of Saigon, Col. Betz told a reporter for the Retrospect in 2011.
"She wanted us to bring him to the United States so one of us could adopt him," her sister, Mary Mullen, of Bellmawr, said during an interview Monday. "She really was a hero."
Col. "Kitty" Betz, 92, a 1942 graduate of Collingswood High School and a Philadelphia nursing school student, died Thursday, May 11, in El Paso, Texas.
When she retired in 1976, Col. Betz ended a military career that spanned more than three decades. Her honors include the Army of Occupation Medal for service in Vietnam; the Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation; four Overseas Service Bars for her duty in Europe, Korea, and Vietnam; and the Legion of Merit with one oak leaf cluster. She also received the Cross of Gallantry that was awarded during the Vietnam War to recognize heroic combat conduct.
During the 2011 Retrospect interview, Col. Betz said her most difficult wartime experience was in April 1966, when she arrived in Vietnam.
"I was practically comatose from the long overseas flight," she said during the interview. "That night, on the eve of Easter, we were mortared."
The Battle of Xa Cam My raged for two days. Hundreds were killed or wounded during the ambush by Viet Cong.
Col. Betz recalled the high number of casualties within the first 30 minutes of the attack, and finding patients lined up "as far as she could see" when she reported for duty and worked two days and nights straight.
Although she had seen terrible things in combat zones, her sister said, she rarely talked about the bad, and she always remained loyal to the Army that had become her extended family.
Since high school, Col. Betz knew she wanted to be a nurse and to attend Jefferson College of Nursing in Philadelphia, which she considered the best program in the region. One of six girls, the family had little money, her sister said.
She took the bus, often falling asleep on the way home after long nights at Jefferson, where she worked in the emergency room of the hospital and had become night superintendent. The bus driver would nudge her awake at her stop, her sister said. While working at Jefferson, a unit of doctors and nurses were called to work overseas.
While working on her nursing education, Col. Betz joined the Army Reserves. She was called to serve in Korea as a second lieutenant in the 171st Evacuation Unit in Taegu, according to her family.
Col. Betz obtained her bachelor's from Temple University, and she attended Duke University, where she received a master's in medical-surgical nursing.
Her family said she had always been a top student and quickly rose through the military ranks available to women at that time, setting up MASH units in Vietnam and Korea.
"She had a very exciting life traveling all over the world," said a niece, Patti Mastoris.
In Collingswood, Col. Betz lettered in field hockey, lacrosse, basketball, and tennis. She also was very committed to the Girl Scouts and her job maintaining the first-aid kit that she was to bring to every troop meeting. When her parents or siblings took Band-Aids, she cried and lectured them about using scouts inventory that was her responsibility to maintain.
She carried her attention to detail with her while working at various military hospitals, which included one in Regensburg, Germany, the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, and Fort Sam Houston Army Hospital, where she spent three years as director of the Army Corps' basic course that trained thousands of nurses who served in Vietnam. She also worked in the Surgeon General's Office at the Pentagon from 1970 to 1973.
In 1976, she retired as chief nurse at the William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso.
In addition to Mullen, Col. Betz is survived by two other sisters, Sue Beier and Rosemarie Szostowski.
Services for Col. Betz were held in El Paso. She will be buried with full military honors Friday, Aug. 11, in Arlington National Cemetery. Condolences may be posted at funerariasdelangel.com.
This obituary has been changed to correct the date of death.