Betty Jean Petty, was born April 14th, 1934, in Sandy Ridge, Arkansas. She went home to the Lord on January 31st, 2024, in Tulsa. Betty was the oldest of four daughters to Robert Bruce Barnett and Laura Ruth (Sampson) Barnett. She was raised in the cotton fields of Northeast Arkansas, where she developed a lifelong green thumb. She enjoyed working outdoors and gardening, preferring that to cleaning and working indoors, but no one kept a cleaner house than she did, in her prime.

Betty enjoyed bowling, bridge, bingo, and countless other games of chance and circumstance. In these endeavors, she had some of the luckiest streaks in the history of the planet, winning a car, a boat, and more than one daily double at Hot Springs. She also enjoyed video games, solving Zelda and Mario and teaching her grandkids the secrets of those games.

Betty loved life and all the joys and beauty that this world offered, but nothing was more important to her than the well-being of her family.

Betty was pre-deceased by her parents, her husband Kenneth Petty in 2015, and her sisters: Linda Jo Bates in 2002, and Peggy Nevez, in 2020. She was also predeceased by her two best friends and sisters from other mothers, Margaret Carpenter, in 2018 and Peggy McIntire, in 2023. She also survived the death of her husband, Herbert E. Foster, in 1973.

Betty is survived by her daughter Beverly Gage and husband Jim, of Collinsville; her son, Lieutenant Colonel (US Army Retired) Jay Foster of Whitefish, MT; her stepdaughter, Martha Petty of Grove, Oklahoma; and her sister, Brenda Devore, of Tulsa.

She is also survived by 7 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren, and 2 great-great-grandchildren, as well as numerous nieces, nephews, cousins, and their families.

Betty marched to her own drumbeat and called things as she saw them. She never met a stranger and had a knack for making friends everywhere she went. Likewise, she could also be direct and impactful with friends and family alike, when most others could not. She made a difference in many, many lives, and stepped up for people when others wouldn't or couldn't. She took in many a stray along the way, for both long and short durations, and helped most of them find a way to their own better path.

There was truly no one else like her. She will be missed by many and won't be forgotten.

Visitation: 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m., Sunday, February 4, 2024
Funeral: 1:00 p.m., Monday, February 5, 2024
Moore's Eastlawn Chapel, 1908 S. Memorial Dr., Tulsa, OK

Interment: Calvary Cemetery, Tulsa, OK


Moore's Eastlawn
(918) 622-1155