“Why?” Betty asked.
“Well,” Leona sighed, “they like to make sure there’s enough grieving for the people who have been killed. They believe a good show of grief helps get the departed ones to the next life. So they round up the young girls in the village, those between ages six and twelve, and chop off their fingers, two or three from each hand. That way they can be sure there will be plenty of weeping and wailing in the village.”
Betty felt her stomach turn. “That’s terrible,” she said. “What about infections?”
Leona shrugged. “Some of the girls die as a result, but they’re only females, after all. The wives in the village have it worse. If a man dies in battle, his wife is killed so she can lie beside him on the death platform.”
“It always seems to be the women who get the worst end of things,” Betty said, thinking back to the women she’d met who were kept as virtual hostages in their homes in Africa. “These people need to hear about the gospel message and the freedom it can bring them.”
They trudged on, listening for any sign of the war party, but they heard none. Eventually, after hiking along a riverbank for three hours, Dugulugu raised his hand for them to stop. It was time for another conference with Leona. Once they were finished talking, five of the guides set off along the trail at a faster pace. Leona announced that they were going on ahead to let the people at Hitadipa know that the rest of the group would soon be there.
Betty was astonished at how quickly the men disappeared. She realized they had probably been walking at a slow pace for most of the trek so that she and Leona would not feel too pushed. She had no doubt they could have covered the distance of the trek in half the time.
By the time shadows were lengthening over the jungle, Betty and Leona and the rest of the party climbed one last ridge. The mission station at Hitadipa lay below them. Betty could clearly see the white house Bill Cutts had built and the airstrip to the right of it.
“The guides must have made it,” Betty said with a chuckle. “Look at all the people waiting on the runway.”
They quickened their pace now that the end was in sight. As they walked down the last ridge, Betty heard the strains of hymns being sung New Guinea style. She had never heard a hymn sound so welcoming before. They were nearly there, and they were safe.
The guides waved at them from the far side of the final stream that needed to be crossed and then waded over to help the women. Finally, after three days of hard slogging over mountains and through dense jungle, they had arrived.
The Cuttses proudly showed Betty and Leona around their new house. They had very few belongings, and after the trek to get there, Betty could understand why. Still it was great to be in a house, drinking coffee and eating sweet potatoes the locals had supplied.
The next morning Betty awoke early. She was eager to see how good a job Bill and the native men had done on the airstrip. She walked from one end of it to the other and back again. Then she moved over two yards and repeated the procedure, looking for anything that might be sticking up or any soft spots in the ground. She found none. The airstrip was perfect, except for an outcrop of rocks at the very front edge of the runway. The rocks were too big to move, but there was plenty of room to avoid them as long as a pilot knew they were there.
By the time Betty got back to the house, Grace Cutts and Leona St. John had preparations for breakfast well under way. As they ate, Bill Cutts radioed George Boggs that Betty had inspected the airstrip and everything was fine. He also made George aware of the rocks on the front edge of the runway. George thanked Bill for the news and promised to fly in at eleven that morning if weather conditions stayed favorable.
By 10:30 A.M. a crowd of Moni people had gathered at the airstrip. They sang hymns back and forth to one another and took turns shouting out Bible verses they had memorized. On the dot of eleven, a faint humming sound that grew louder and louder could be heard. Soon a Cessna 180 was circling directly overhead, and the group on the ground went wild, cheering and dancing. Finally Bill Cutts yelled to the crowd in their language above the noise, pointing to the edge of the airstrip as he did so.
“He’s telling them to sit down because the plane has invisible knives that could cut them to pieces,” Grace Cutts told Betty. “That’s the best way he could think of to describe the propeller.”
After about two minutes, Bill’s words had achieved the desired effect, and the group sat cross-legged at the edge of the airstrip. By now, George had circled the Cessna and had it lined up for a landing. Betty glanced up at the makeshift windsock Bill had constructed. A gentle breeze was blowing from the southeast, perfect for a landing on the new airstrip.
George touched the wheels of the Cessna down about twenty feet in front of the rocks and rolled the plane to a stop. Bill held his hands out for the people to stay seated until the propeller had stopped turning. Then he smiled and motioned for them to stand. Betty watched as the crowd surged forward, each person eager to touch the “canoe from the sky,” as they called the airplane, and to talk with the man who had been “carried in its belly.”
It was a day of singing, dancing, feasting, and celebrating. It was a day Betty would never forget as she saw firsthand how much an MAF airplane meant not only to the missionaries but also to the local people. The plane was a lifeline for them, a way to get a doctor in to visit them or to fly to one of the coastal towns for treatment if they became very ill.
The celebrating went on into the evening. George told Betty he was having so much fun that he had decided to spend the night. The next morning, he, Betty, and Leona flew out of Hitadipa. They dropped Leona back at Homejo before setting off for Nabire, where Betty picked up her Cessna 180. The two airplanes then flew back to Homejo, where they loaded up the rest of the Cuttses’ household wares and supplies. They ferried these to Hitadipa. Betty became the second pilot to land on the new airstrip there.
The Cuttses were grateful to finally have their household belongings, which Betty and George helped carry to the new house. Now with a folding table and chairs in the living room, the house was looking like a real home. Finally Betty left Hitadipa and flew back to Sentani, where that night she enjoyed a long, relaxing bath. Her muscles still ached from the three-day trek, but she didn’t regret making it one bit. She had never quite experienced anything like walking down the mountainside while the voices of Moni Christians singing hymns echoed through the lush vegetation. Nor would she ever forget the tears streaming down Grace Cutts’s face as she thanked Betty for her help. It made her feel proud to have had the privilege of being a part of something like MAF from its start.
Chapter 17
Wings to Serve
After eighteen months of flying in New Guinea, Betty returned home to the United States. Once again, Christians around the country wanted to hear about her flying experiences. She set off on a speaking tour, crisscrossing the country as she told people about her flying adventures, the help airplanes were to missionaries in the field, and the need for more Christians to become involved in missions. After the speaking tour, she returned to MAF headquarters in Fullerton, California, where she served as corporate secretary on the organization’s board of directors.
One of the happiest duties in her new position was to meet with young pilots who wanted to serve with MAF. It excited Betty to think that something that had started out as a simple idea in the hearts and minds of four military personnel in the waning days of World War II had blossomed into such a large and successful organization, with pilots and airplanes serving missionaries in many regions of the world.
Betty’s other joy back at the office in Fullerton was coordinating the monthly prayer letter, which had grown out of the small Tuesday night prayer meetings she had held at the Trotmans’ home as she worked to establish MAF. Now MAF staff around the world sent in their prayer requests, and Betty would condense them into a prayer letter that was sent to thousands of supporters. Although she had no more overseas flying assignments, she did get to fly in the United States, mostly ferrying new MAF airplanes from the factory to New Orleans, where they were packed and shipped to overseas locations.
After several years working with MAF in California, Betty realized that her parents were becoming aged and frail, and needed someone around to look after them. She knew it was time for her to go home to Medina, as the Evergreen Point area where the family home stood was now called. Throughout the remainder of her life, Betty stayed linked to MAF, continuing to coordinate the prayer letter from her home and taking on short speaking tours. She also loved to visit Bellevue Christian School, the school her two older brothers had started, and talk to the students. The school had grown from nine students to over eight hundred.
In 1976 her father died, followed in 1981 by her mother.
In 1990, at the age of seventy, Betty began to notice some strange things about her own behavior. She would drive to the grocery store and forget where to turn off the freeway to get home, or she would begin to write down her phone number and forget the last four digits. She went to see her doctor, and the diagnosis was inescapable. Betty Greene had Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s slowly causes a person’s memories to fade until in the end the person is unable to remember the names of family members or even his or her own name.
Betty battled to stay active and alert as long as she could. Her old and dear friend Dorothy Mount, who had been Grady Parrott’s secretary for many years, moved into an apartment nearby so she could care for Betty. When Betty became more forgetful, women at the First Presbyterian Church of Bellevue made up a roster of helpers so that someone would be with her twenty-four hours a day. It was particularly painful for her family, especially her twin brother Bill, to watch Betty lose her memory. The woman who had navigated her way across the Sahara Desert, flown over the Andes Mountains, and piloted numerous military aircraft could no longer find her way in her own home.
In early April 1997, Betty Greene caught a bad cold. When she recovered, she was unable to eat. She lay contentedly in her bed, staring out at the broadleaf maple trees in bud, the sparkling cold water of Lake Washington, and the gently sloping banks where she and Bill had collected buckets of blackberries seventy years before.
One day the woman looking after Betty tiptoed into the room to see whether she was awake and found her propped up on a pillow, wide awake and smiling. “Do you know God?” Betty asked the woman in a clear voice.
“Yes, I do,” the woman replied.
Betty’s face lit up. “Isn’t it wonderful!” she exclaimed.
Soon after that brief conversation, Betty fell into a coma, and on April 10, 1997, she died. Her funeral, held at First Presbyterian Church of Bellevue, was titled a “Celebration of the Life of Betty Greene.” Although many people mourned her passing, there was also much to celebrate.
Today Betty Greene’s dream to use airplanes to serve missionaries lives on. Indeed the organization she helped found is alive and flourishing. Missionary Aviation Fellowship-United States now operates eighty-four aircraft from forty-seven bases located in nineteen countries. It is the world’s largest fleet of private aircraft. Every four minutes, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year, a MAF-US airplane takes off or lands somewhere in the world. Each year these aircraft fly nearly five million miles, landing at some three thousand different airstrips while serving over five hundred Christian and humanitarian organizations. As well, MAF operates an extensive global communications network, from HF and VHF radio to satellite phones and an email system.
