Betty Lou Northway Jacobs was born February 5, 1925, on the family farm in Seward County Nebraska near the town of Ulysses. Her parents were Ray & Mary Anne Asbury Northway. When she was 5 her family moved briefly to South Dakota looking for work during the Dust Bowl days. She recounted the stories of grasshoppers and her mother putting wet towels around the windows & doors. Jobs weren’t any better in South Dakota, so the family returned less than 2 years later minus their farm equipment & team of horses.
Betty and her sisters attended a country school near Ulysses, Nebraska. They walked the mile and half to and from but if the weather was too bad, her father hitched a horse to the wagon and picked up the children in the neighborhood. She remembered being frightened to walk by one pasture that purportedly had a bull in it but couldn’t recall ever seeing the bull.
When they returned to Nebraska, they lived in rented housing in Garrison, Nebraska. Her father found work with the WPA, laying out the streets in nearby David City. They later moved to David City where she graduated from high school in 1942.
After graduation, she worked as a switchboard operator for Lincoln Telephone & Telegraph in David City, Nebraska. During WW2, her sister, Catherine, had moved to California to be near her sailor husband. Betty begged her parents to let her go to California. So, they drove to Columbus, Nebraska and put her on the train to San Diego. She worked for the Payroll Disbursement Office of the Navy until returning to Nebraska.
While working in a small (3 tables & a counter) restaurant, she met her future husband Victor Bennett Jacobs, a Kansas boy. He was working for Crawford Electric as part of Rural Electrification Association building electrical lines to the farms in rural Nebraska.
In 1950, she traveled to Norton, Kansas to visit Vic’s family. She inquired at the local telephone office about a job. They asked her when she could start and she said, “in a couple of days”. She told of writing her mother a letter to tell her she was staying because if she called her on the telephone, they would both cry.
On December 3, 1950, she and Victor were married at her parents’ home in David City. They spent the first 14 years of their married life in Norton, Kansas where they became parents to 4 children.
In 1964 they moved to Stockton, KS where they lived until retiring to Hays, KS in 1995. During their time in Stockton, she worked for Southwestern Bell Telephone in Plainville, Farm Bureau Insurance, Celly Rupp/Stockton Alfalfa and International Harvester.
Betty is survived by her children, Mary Smith of Colby & Jean Anne Sharp of Skiatook, Oklahoma, Vicki Schulte of Hays & Jon Jacobs of Munjor, seven grandchildren, twenty-two great grandchildren and 3 great-great grandchildren.
She was preceded in death by her parents, sisters Catherine & Doris, granddaughter Crystal Sharp, grandson Michael Sharp and her husband Victor.
Memorial Services will be Saturday July 11th, 2026, at 11:00 AM at Hays Christian Church, 1318 East 22nd Street Hays, Kansas 67601 with Pastor Dana Glover officiating.
Betty will be laid to rest in the Norton Cemetery at a later date.
In lieu of flowers memorials are suggested to: Hays Christian Church in care of the Funeral Chapel.
Cremation under the direction of Keithley Funeral Homes and Crematory – Brock’s Chapel, 2509 Vine Street Hays, Kansas 67601. Memories and words of comfort may be shared with Betty’s family on her tribute page via: www.keithleyfuneralchapels.com