Betty Ruth Adams (Plainview)

Betty Adams, formerly of Plainview, died August 17, 2026, in Weatherford, Texas. Funeral services will be Saturday, August 22, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. at Kornerstone Funeral Directors, Plainview, Texas. Visitation will occur immediately before the service from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Burial will follow afterwards inPlainview Memorial Park.

On May8, 1907, Frederick Schafer, who was born in Darnstadt, Germany in 1837, purchased three half sections of land northeast of Plainview, at a cost of $100.00 per acre, for his three daughters: Lizzie Kitzman, Carrie Heath, and Tillie Freese.

In 1926, Tillie and her family came to Texas and began farming all of this land, some of which was still in native prairie grass – and none of which had irrigation wells. Those would come soon, and have now departed. In 1933, Tillie’s son, Elmer Freese, married Nettie Chiddix, a girl from the farm just north of Tillie’s. After living with his parents for several years, hiding what little money they saved under a rock in the basement, Elmer and Nettie acquired a couple of two room houses, from different parts of the county, and they used mule teams to move them to Aunt Lizzie’s place, putting them together to make a four room house. Electricity finally arrived in 1946.

On May 8, 1936, their daughter, Betty Ruth, was born in that house. For the last eight years, she has told everyone she met that she was a “daughter of the dirt.” From there, she rode the school bus, often sitting in the lap of one of her Chiddix cousins, to attend her first four years of school at Liberty. One of Betty’s recollections of World War II was that suddenly the once overcrowded Liberty school bus was empty, because all of the teenage boys had left for the service.

The motto of the family was to save money for a land payment. By the late 1940's, Elmerand Nettie had accumulated enough money to buy Aunt Lizzie’s place, and in 1952 they built a comfortable home on it, where they lived for the rest of their lives. Their great-granddaughter now lives there today. In 1954, Betty graduated from Plainview High School, and she married Kenneth Adams in a wedding ceremony on the farm shortly thereafter. In 1956, Elmer and Nettie were able to buy Aunt Carrie’s farm, just to the east of Aunt Lizzie’s.

Also in 1956, Kenneth completed his enlistment in the Marine Corps, having served in Korea, and Betty and Kenneth moved into the old four room house that she was born in and began farming. They were still living there when their oldest son, Marvin, was born. Soon thereafter, they built a home on the north side of what had been Aunt Carrie’s place. They farmed Aunt Carrie’s place, as well as other land in the area, until Kenneth’s death on the farm in 1994.

The decades moved quickly by for Betty, with everyday including cooking, cleaning, sewing, gardening, bookkeeping, practicing the piano, and farm labor. The 1950's were marked by the struggle to acquire farm machinery; the 1960's saw efforts to rent more land, with children growing and starting school; the 1970's saw more modern farm machinery and the purchase of land, with children leaving for college never to return; the farming success of the late 1980's and early 1990's was marred by Kenneth’s ten year struggle with cancer; and the next thirty years saw Betty blossoming as a widow, doing what she wanted, when she wanted, especially if it involved quack medicine.

Sunday was always for church. Betty (age 7) first played the piano for a church service in the Liberty schoolhouse in 1943, and she played for her last church service in Plainview in 2018. At the time of her death, she was still playing the piano for church services in the assisted living facility where, according to her, she was being held prisoner.

In 2018, Betty made the difficult decision to leave the farm that she intended to die on, so that she could move to Weatherford to receive the family assistance that she was beginning to need. The move was difficult. Trees and hills obscured her view. The climate was too humid. But, worst of all, she didn’t have multiple generations of history and intertwined familial relationships with every person she met up with. She was a stranger in a strange land.

Betty is survived by her youngest son, Keith Lee Adams, his wife, Cheryl Faye, and his daughter, Ashley Jones, all of Comanche, Oklahoma; her oldest son, Marvin Adams, his wife, Amy, and their daughter, Callie, all of Weatherford, Texas, and their son, Matthew Schafer Adams, of Washington, D. C.; and one niece, Donna Freese Burnett, of Plainview. She was the last surviving Chiddix of her generation, and she is survived by three Freese cousins: Marcheta May of Dallas, Texas, Helen Mickel of North Little Rock, Arkansas, and Russell May of Tampa, Florida.