Betty J. Wickstrom

Betty Jane Smith, of Boulder, Colorado, passed away in the early hours of March 16, 2026, at age 98. After a short battle with cancer, she died at home surrounded by family.

Betty was born to William S. Smith and Anna Karlsson on March 4th, 1928, the oldest of three children. She graduated from Boulder High School in 1946 and married her high school sweetheart, Gordon M. Wickstrom, at the First Christian Church.

After Gordon returned from his service in the Navy during WWII, he enrolled at CU Boulder on the GI bill, and Betty worked full-time in the CU bookstore until Gordon’s graduation in 1950. The young couple moved to Powell, Wyoming, where Gordon became a teacher of English Literature and theater director at Powell High School. During their 16 years in Wyoming, two daughters were born: Linnea in 1951 and Maurya in 1959.

In 1966, the family pulled up stakes and moved to Palo Alto, California, where Gordon earned a Ph.D. in Drama at Stanford University in 1968. Betty attended school part-time at Foothills Junior College. From 1968 to 1991, Betty and Gordon lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where Gordon was a professor and director of Drama at Franklin and Marshall College. Betty continued her college studies at Franklin and Marshall, graduating with a B.A. in Religious Studies in 1973. She went on to certify to teach in Pennsylvania and worked for five years as a substitute high school teacher in the Lancaster County and City schools.

During her 23 years in Lancaster, Betty was active in the League of Women Voters, serving in many capacities, including that of president of the county League in 1990, and was an anti-nuclear activist in the time of Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant. She also continued a lifelong love of the church when she joined St. Peter’s UCC and filled leadership positions there as well as at county and regional levels of the UCC’s Penn Central Conference.

Through the years, Betty and Gordon had the privilege of living and traveling abroad several times, including trips to England, Europe, Poland (1976), Ireland, Japan (1987), and going to Sweden to visit relatives in 1958.

As they reached retirement age in 1991, Betty and Gordon made the decision to return home to Boulder. They built a house designed for a beautiful view of the Flatirons, and above the house on Bluff Street, where Gordon was born. They frequently spent time at the small cabin on Sugarloaf that Betty’s dad, mother, and brother hand-built in 1945 on an old mining claim. Gordon died in 2014, and Betty continued to live in the house they built.

Gordon was a passionate and expert fly fisherman, starting at age 12 in the streams of the Front Range. Betty joined him as a fly fisher when she was 18, and they shared a love of the streams of Colorado, Wyoming, Pennsylvania, and Ireland.

Betty was a life member of the First Congregational UCC, a member of the League of Women Voters in Boulder, Boulder County Democratic Women, and the historic Gold Hill Club. She kept up social contacts with the many relatives on both sides of the family and the many friends made in Boulder, across the country, and in their travels.

Betty had a keen interest in the history of Boulder and the surrounding Front Range, and especially of her own family, which had deep roots there. Betty’s paternal grandfather was from Belfast, Ireland, and eventually moved to Caribou, above Nederland, to mine. He then became a rancher near Sterling, Colorado, where the chief crop was sugar beets. Betty’s dad, William S. Smith, along with his brothers, helped his dad with the backbreaking work that entailed. When John died, Betty’s grandmother returned to Boulder and hired Anna, newly arrived from Sweden in 1922 at 18 years old, to help with the children. Later, Anna and William married, and William became an auto mechanic. Betty’s dad was a born storyteller, and she learned the history of immigrants, miners, farmers, and the mountains at his knee. She, in turn, loved telling stories and keeping the history alive.

Betty was always active in music and played piano from second grade through high school – accompanying her school choirs as well as performing in recitals. Her dad played the horn in dance bands and the City of Boulder band and encouraged his children to study and enjoy music. She and Gordon were lovers of classical music and opera and attended concerts and performances in New York City, Philadelphia, locally, and across the world.

She is survived by her daughter Linnea and son-in-law Peter Maresca and their son Per, by her daughter Maurya and Maurya’s daughter Erin Reynolds and son Naoise Reynolds, and her sister, Doris Adami.

A memorial service will be held for Betty on Sunday, April 19th, 2:00 PM at the First Congregational Church UCC Boulder, 1128 Pine St, Boulder, CO 80302. A reception will be held at the church following the service.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests that if you so desire, a contribution can be made to the Friends of Sugar Loaf Fire Department, Inc. (SGRLF). The cabin on Sugarloaf has been saved from wildfires twice, partly due to the heroic efforts of the Sugarloaf Volunteer Fire Department.