Wiechert inducted to Senior Hall of Fame
Betty Wiechert, an active member of the community in the Zanesville area, was named to the The Ohio Department of Aging's Ohio Senior Citizens Hall of Fame on Wednesday. She was one of 15 seniors from around the state honored.
Wiechert was born in Newark on Oct. 19, 1919. She died at age 101 on Feb. 22, 2021.
After enrolling her youngest child in school, she enrolled at Ohio University, graduating with a degree in education in 1972. She taught elementary school in the Maysville Local Schools district for 17 years.
Wiechert was a member of numerous community groups, including the Salvation Army Women’s Auxiliary, Church Women United, Christian Women’s Club, Older Wiser Livelier Seniors and American Association of University Women. She joined the Forever Dad's Prison Ministry when she was 87, working with inmates at the Noble County Correctional Institution in Caldwell, educating men on bettering family and community relationships. She continued to work with the program through her 100th birthday, when the inmates sang her Happy Birthday. She was also involved in a number of local arts and history organizations.
Where she couldn't help in person, she wrote letters. "I don't know how many letters she wrote, to prisoners, to shut-ins, to missionaries around the world," her daughter Jeanine Busey said.
Active with her family, never missing a ball game, or concert or dance class, she also took mission trips, taught Sunday school "and was always involved in whatever service projects were gong on," Busey said.
Affectionately known as 'the bag lady,' she passed her love for service down to her children and grandchildren. "She was so busy with so many organizations; church, school, in the community, that she had a bag for each activity," her granddaughter Joby Stevens said. Stevens, who lives in Mt. Perry, adopted that trait too, and love of service, as well. "When I was 44 and she was 88, she stopped driving," Stephens said. A stay at home mother with children either graduated or in school, she became her grandmother's driver.
On days they were not helping others, at Mission U, Forever Dads or at the Noble County Correctional Institution among others, they would head to the mall, where lunch would be from Wendy's, chili with onions and a chocolate Frosty. The Frosty was enjoyed first, Stevens said with a laugh.
Helping those in need brought her to the Noble County Correctional Institution. Through the Inside Out program Wiechert taught men that were incarcerated to be better fathers and community members. She would bake cookies for inmates by the hundreds.
The weather was dismal when Noble Correctional Institution celebrated Wiechert's birthday. "It was cold, it was rainy, and all 2,500 men were out in the yard," Wiechert's daughter Kristie Howard said, "and those men, whether they had a coat on or not, were standing in the rain singing to mom."
"She thought she was going into a room to have cupcakes," Stevens said, "The men standing in the rain, singing Happy Birthday to a 100-year-old woman, it was so magical." The inmates, all 2,500 of them, signed a massive card. "She was elated, she could not believe the outpouring of love."
Howard continued making cookies to help inmates at Noble Correctional celebrate their graduation from the Inside Out program after her mother retired at age 100. "I really learned how hard she worked," she said, "making over 100 cookies, making sure they are up to mom's quality."
"For years that was all we would get her for a birthday or celebration; we would get her flour and sugar and things that she would need to make cookies," her son Greg said. When she turned 100, "she finally admitted the cookie trays were getting too heavy to lift out of the oven," he said.
"She was always so selfless, it was always about someone else and someone else's needs. She was a great model of how to treat others," he said.
Wiechert was announced as an inductee to the hall of fame in 2019, to be inducted in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic cancelled the ceremony until this year. "She was humbled" by the honor, Busey said. Wiechert's six children, Henry, Rudolph Jr, Greg, Judy, Jeanine and Kristie were able to gather in her honor in Columbus during the ceremony.
This article originally appeared on Zanesville Times Recorder: Wiechert inducted to Senior Hall of Fame
