Betty Corrine Riggers

1/23/1931 — 1/23/2022

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On Sunday, Jan. 23, 2022, and on her 91st birthday, Betty Corrine (Tyler) Riggers passed away peacefully in her sleep at Royal Plaza in the presence of her husband Stanley and close family.

In her early 20s, in Oakland, Calif., and with sons Mike and Tim in tow, Betty met the love of her life, Stanley Riggers, then a lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. They married in January of 1955 and immediately moved to Craigmont where Stan joined his parents W.W. “Wink” and Beryle Riggers in farming.

Over the next many years Betty became a somewhat quintessential farming wife, mother, grandmother and member of the Craigmont community. Sons Steve and Nathan followed the move from California and over the years, the family would grow to include 10 grandchildren and, presently, 13 great-grandchildren. Like most homemakers of that generation, Betty took great pride in cooking, with cherry pies, beef stroganoff and insightful advice in the kitchen about how to live a purposeful productive life among her specialties.

Betty’s origins began very differently from the life she would come to enjoy in Idaho for nearly seven decades. She was born on Jan. 23, 1931, in St. Paul, Minn., the youngest child of E.L. and Frida Tyler. Her mother had immigrated from Sweden at the age of 18 in 1914.

Frida contracted tuberculosis and was placed in a TB sanitarium during her pregnancy with Betty, requiring Betty’s immediate removal from her mother’s care upon birth. Except for a short return of Frida’s health that allowed her to rejoin the family in Betty’s second year, Betty was raised without her mother’s presence in the household. The family’s life in Isle, Minn., during the years of the Great Depression were stark and difficult. For five years Betty and her three older siblings, Elvin, Delores and Lee, were placed in the Odd Fellows and Rebekahs Lodges Children’s Home in Northfield, Minn.

Betty’s brothers would both enter military service during World War II. Elvin became a U.S. Army Air Corps pilot and was killed in his first combat mission over Germany, just one week before the war ended in Europe. Betty always believed the sorrow that emanated from Elvin’s loss hastened her mother’s death in the TB sanitarium a year later, when Betty was 15.

During the war Betty moved to Oakland, where her father labored as a welder on war ships in the Alameda Shipyards. Soon after her high school graduation Betty married her first husband, and Mike and Tim were born in the two years thereafter. It could be said their lives were characterized far more by lack than by blessings. This all changed a few years later when Betty accepted what could be characterized as a “pinch-hit blind date” with Stanley. And soon, lack would become abundance for all of them with the move to Craigmont in 1955.

In her first several decades in Craigmont, Betty was involved in the Junior Chamber of Commerce auxiliary and the United Church of Craigmont. She worked for several years as a field enumerator for the USDA, and was once a candidate for Lewis County Commissioner.

But her greatest community involvement and contribution was her many years as the coordinator for the American Field Services foreign exchange student program in Lewis County. Her involvement ultimately gave Betty a much desired daughter for a year when Betty and Stan had the great pleasure of hosting Katie Gruetert from Switzerland in 1982.

Married for 67 years, Stan and Betty spent 65 years together in their farmhouse 4 miles east of Craigmont, eventually moving in 2020 to Royal Plaza in Lewiston, where Stanley still resides. Betty will be remembered by friends and family for her love of books, movies and games of Trivial Pursuit. She loved Camas Prairie winters and spending time with her sister Delores in McCall.

Betty is survived by her husband Stanley in Lewiston; brother Lee of Fair Oaks Calif.; sons Mike (Robyn) of Tucson, Ariz., Tim of Tacoma, Steve (Joan) of McCall, and Nathan (Chrissy) of Nezperce; 10 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.

The Riggers family would like to extend their sincere thanks to the staff at Royal Plaza and at St. Joseph Regional Medical Center Family Hospice, especially to Kim and Bree, for the heartfelt care they provided to Betty in her final months, and also to Lyle Kuther and Tracy Watkins for their years of friendship and assistance they gave to Betty.

A private interment for immediate family was held at the Craigmont cemetery. A larger celebration of life for Betty is being planned by the family to be held in the spring.

In lieu of flowers, the family would request that any memorials or remembrances in Betty’s honor be made to Sister Mary’s Children P.O. Box 809 McCall, ID 83638 or online atsistermaryschildren.org.

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