Betty Ann Awalt (née Bruce), 76, beloved wife, mother, grandmother and friend, passed away on the evening of Saturday, April 1 after a short battle with pancreatic cancer. She met her end with all the grace and sense of humor she was loved and known for. Even as cancer ravaged her body and chemo kept her sick, she made sure to comfort and encourage her family and friends. She stood firm in her faith, full of her quick-witted sense of humor, and easily flashed her megawatt smile until the very end. She died at home surrounded by her husband and daughters. She left this world more beautiful than she found it and will forever be missed.

Betty was born in Freeport, Texas on October 18, 1946. The youngest daughter of Lavada (née Childress) and Andrew "Top" Bruce, and younger sister to her brother, Donald Bruce. She grew up in Velasco, Texas, in a modest house her father built with a large yard that backed up to the Brazos River. Her Mother surrounded it with trees and flowers and filled it with good food and love. As a young girl, Betty loved sneaking over the levy and looking back at her home, across the river. She was surrounded by Aunts and Uncles and loads of cousins in her childhood and held all of them close to her heart.

In 1965, Betty graduated from Brazosport High School and started her freshman year at Southwest Texas State College in San Marcos. She studied early childhood education, pledged Chi Omega sorority, joined the Strutters dance team and eventually went on a date with her future husband, Bill Awalt. They married in February of 1968 and quickly relocated to Newport, Rhode Island where Bill attended Navy Officer Candidate School. Together they moved to eight cities and more houses than either of them wanted to count, eventually returning to Texas where they set down roots in The Woodlands.

No matter where she lived, Betty turned her house into a home. She and Bill renewed each one, painting, pulling up old carpets, stripping wood floors, and prying open windows painted shut. She filled each home with antique furniture, house plants, loads of family pictures, music, beloved family pets and, for most of her life, a landline with a very long cord that she talked to her Mom on every day. She was not afraid of wallpaper. She sewed matching drapes and bedding and down filled pillows with fringe. She planted rows of peonies, hundreds of tulip bulbs and pockets of irises. She knew all the names of the trees.

She had four daughters: Kimberly and Kristen, born in 1971 and 1973 and years later, Stephanie in 1981 and Kathryn in 1983, a birth order which, much to her daughters' embarrassment, led to her notorious family introductory line of "two in bras and two in diapers". Her daughters and grandchildren were the joys of her life. She cultivated a deep sense of love and support for all of their individual talents, interests, creativity, education and specific needs.

Nowhere did she express her love more than in the kitchen. Homemade meals each night, the most perfect lunch sandwiches, imaginative hors-d'oeuvres, and decadent desserts, including the best pie crust you've ever had and a bread pudding with a caramel bourbon sauce that was so good you'd want to eat it on its own with a spoon, standing at the kitchen counter. In an era of Hidden Valley Ranch, Betty whipped up her own salad dressings before it was cool. She threw dinner parties and wine parties and birthday parties and block parties. She introduced an entire St. Louis community to fajitas at a cook-out she threw in the mid-80s. Cooking was her love language, one she passed on to her daughters.

Betty perfected holidays and had a knack for determining how to make a house look great in Christmas lights. She wrapped presents in a way that would make Kris Kringle proud, topping each one with a perfect bow. No one can seem to make her Grandmother's Thanksgiving dressing as well as she did or understand what, exactly, the cat wants like she could. She'd tell you if your outfit looked good or not and if you needed a haircut. She was shockingly fidgety, something she channeled by intensely tearing any styrofoam cup she held into tiny pieces or obsessively folding a program or random piece of paper she found in her purse into a teeny, tiny square while quietly yet quickly bouncing her foot in the air whenever she had to sit still.

Betty was endlessly creative and enormously energetic. She started several successful companies over the years, among them a lunch delivery service in Ft. Worth called The Picnic Basket. Her lunches became so popular that she couldn't keep up with the demand. Later, she started Fringe & Tassel, a custom pillow company that in six short months took over her entire basement in St. Louis with wholesale orders. Together, Betty and her friend, Patti Smith, opened The Painted Pony, a children's clothing store chain that quickly became and remained a St. Louis establishment until it closed many years later.

Betty was a person you'd call in good times and bad. She knew how to lighten the mood, how to bring people together and how to be present when life felt impossibly hard and sad. She experienced and overcame great obstacles throughout her life and relied on her deep and steady Christian faith to guide her through. She was a friend to many and counted each of them as a happy blessing. She knew how to turn love into an action. She was an expert encourager.

She was beautiful - so beautiful. We're not kidding. Her classmates literally named her Most Beautiful. Besides being drop-dead gorgeous, like most southern belles, she was friendly, loving, warm, elegant and full of class. She possessed an infectious, sing-song laugh that danced through and above any place or crowd so pitch-perfectly that her husband, children, grandchildren, family members and friends of all kinds always knew where to find her when they heard it ring out. Oh how we loved her!

She is survived by her adoring and loving husband of 55 years, Bill Awalt, her daughters and sons-in-law, Kimberly Walsh, Kristen Leturno, Stephanie and Paul Meyer and Kathryn and Adam Lambert. Her beloved grandchildren, Brooke Walsh, Peyten Awalt, Presten Leturno, Dylan and Elodie Meyer and Henry and Claire Lambert, as well as countless extended family members and friends. She is preceded in death by her father, mother, brother, aunts and uncles and several dear friends. We are certain they are basking in each other's company now. A 'Celebration of Life' service will be held Friday, May 12 at The Woodlands Methodist Church Robb Chapel. In lieu of donations or flowers, please plant a little something in her memory.