After a very short illness, Elizabeth (“Betty”) Hood Anderson, passed away peacefully in her sleep the morning of Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024, at 94 years of age.
Friends and family were with her for her final days and noted as an appropriate final act, Betty took her last breath while wearing one of her favorite shirts, which read simply, “Earth without Art, is just Eh.”
Born in Iowa City, Iowa, on March 11, 1929, to parents Edna Macintosh Hood and Burton Francis Hood, Betty was the youngest of three children. After her parents divorced, Betty and her sister and mother returned to Minnesota. After a few years her mother remarried, and the family moved to a home in Mahtomedi, Minnesota. As a child, Betty spent many hours swimming, fishing and boating in White Bear Lake, located just a block from the family home. She enjoyed a love of animals and the family pets, which included a dog named Rip, and Betty’s pet duck, named Johnny. Betty enjoyed her friends in school, but claimed she never enjoyed any of her classes, with the exception of … art class.
After graduating from Mahtomedi High School, she went on to earn a degree in commercial art at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). She began working as a commercial artist for a greeting card company in St. Paul. Later in life, MCAD awarded Betty a Masters of Fine Arts Degree for her life-time achievements in art.
Through Betty’s brother-in-law, she met and married Richard (“Dick”) Anderson in 1954. They moved to Shoreview, Minnesota, where they later had two daughters. In the early 1960s, Betty and Dick moved to their dream home in Bloomington, Minnesota. Mostly a homemaker, Betty also worked as a freelance graphic artist working on a variety of projects including greeting cards, bread bags, bird seed bags, and hardware catalogues, to name a few projects. She also took up sculpting and pottery, and painted mostly with oils, acrylics and water colors. Eventually, Betty joined the Bloomington Art Center, where she shared her talents by teaching others how to paint with water colors.
Betty enjoyed summers on Lake Sylvia, when she and Dick purchased Dick’s rustic family cabin on the west lake. Betty was especially active in efforts to preserve the loon population and curb the spread of invasive species. When Dick and Betty moved permanently to the lake, Betty continued to actively paint and sculpt, attend annual water color workshops, as well as teach water color painting locally. Betty and her fellow artist friends also traveled to locations far and wide to sight see and paint in Italy, England, South Dakota, California, South Carolina and many places in northern Minnesota. She impacted many of her students and friends with her positive support and encouragement, as well as her teaching skills.
In 1999, Betty and Dick moved to Lake Sylvia to live year-round. To stay active in the wintertime, they joined the community-led project to fundraise and build the new Annandale Library, and became regular features at the local coffee shop. The pair became known among these new friends as the instigator and the artist. Their escapades included saving and restoring the historic former library; redesigning and installing a new totem pole on Lake Sylvia’s Totem Pole Point; helping with DIY projects in the homes and businesses of friends; combating invasive species in area lakes, protecting the local Loon populations and generally looking after the local watersheds. One of Betty’s most lasting works of art was to design and create a life-size figure of a boy wearing a cape, goggles and fins envisioned to depict the joys of youth and summer. After being rendered in bronze at a local foundry, it was installed by Dick and close friend Jerry Johnson at the Annandale Clock Tower.
During their lake years, Betty and Dick met and made many dear friends and spent many hours of fun and laughter while boating, playing card games, and engaging in elaborate pranks with friends around the lake and in Annandale Dick and Betty truly enjoyed becoming a part of the Annandale community and the Lake Sylvia neighborhood. Because of those friendships, Betty thrived and lived happily and independently until she was 92 when Dick and Betty’s advanced years and declining health necessitated a move to Assisted Living. Shortly after moving, her life-long partner and husband passed away at 100 years of age. Betty remained living first at assisted living and then in the Memory Care Center until her death.
Betty is survived by two daughters Karen (Keith) Gebhardt, Lynne Anderson, plus three grandchildren, Calvin (Lola) Jepson, Morgan Gebhardt and Andrew Gebhardt, sister, Elaine Hill, Sister-in-law Mary Lou Anderson and honorary daughter Susan (“Suds”) Griffith plus numerous nieces and nephews.
She was preceded in death by her husband, Dick Anderson, parents, brother Burton Hood, II, sister Patricia Gilbertson and brothers-in-law, John Gilbertson, Robert Anderson, and James Hill, sisters-in-law Lois (Anderson) Tankersley, and Marcia Hood, and grandson, Ian Jepson.
There will be a Celebration of Life and Exhibit of Betty’s Artwork to be held during warmer temperatures this year.