One visitor who made an impression on Betty during this time was an Armenian woman named Arousiag Stepanian. Around the Howards’ dinner table one evening, Arousiag recounted what happened to her and her family in 1915 at the hands of the Turks. She was twelve years old at the time and lived with her family in the city of Brousa, near Constantinople (now Istanbul). But the Turks decided to move all Armenians out of the area.
Arousiag’s family and all the other Armenians around were forced to pack their belongings and leave their homes behind. What followed was a harrowing journey of many months. Along the way Arousiag’s parents died, leaving her and her three sisters all alone. The four sisters stuck together, supporting one another. Many people urged them to convert to Islam and save themselves, but the girls held firmly to their Christian beliefs.
Then one day the Stepanian sisters, along with many other Armenians, were forced to cross a river, not at the usual ford but at a dangerously swift place with steep sides running down to the water. The two younger sisters were assisted safely across to the other side, and then Arousiag’s older sister made it across. Finally Arousiag was able to make it to the other side of the river. But once on the other side, the two older girls could not find their two younger sisters. As they searched for their sisters, a soldier stopped the two older girls and tried to forcibly take them into his harem. Arousiag resisted and was cut by the man’s sword before he threw her into the river.
“In the plunge I struck the river bottom,” Arousiag said. Betty sat spellbound listening to the story. “When I came to the surface I tried to swim, though I had never been taught. Somehow I was floating with the current. I heard a rifle shot and, immediately after, a cry from Pailazou [her older sister]: ‘Goodbye, Arousiag, goodbye!’ I was struggling in the water and was almost drowning, so I could not see what happened on the bank. Had Pailazou attempted to escape? Was she wounded or killed? I do not know to this day.”
Nor did Arousiag ever see her two younger sisters again. Soon after crossing the river, many of the Armenians were massacred by the Turks. Perhaps her sisters were killed in the massacre, or perhaps they escaped. Arousiag would never know.
Arousiag carried on with her story, telling how she didn’t drown but was washed downstream until she was able to crawl from the river. Soon afterward, a nomadic Arab family captured her and took her as their servant. To disguise her Armenian identity, the family dressed Arousiag in Arab clothing and tattooed her forehead, cheeks, and chin in traditional designs. (Betty could clearly see the unusual marks on her face.) For eighteen months Arousiag served as the Arab family’s servant, traveling with them as they moved from grazing place to grazing place following their herds.
Betty herself was twelve years old, the same age Arousiag had been at the time of her ordeal, and she wondered how or even whether she could survive such a harrowing experience. But Arousiag had survived, and she spoke freely of the power of her Christian faith to help her through the terrible ordeal. Betty stored away Arousiag’s example inside.
For now Betty’s life was stable and quiet, lacking any kind of adventure. Life in Moorestown had fallen into a pleasant routine for her. She did well at school, made new friends, and enjoyed her summers at Gale Cottage in New Hampshire. It was when she was thirteen, just after Jim, her last sibling, was born, that Betty turned her mind to the matter of Christianity. Of course, she had always considered herself a Christian, but now as a teenager she was asking questions that hadn’t occurred to her before. She wanted to be sure she had her own faith and not just the faith of her parents.
At the time Betty was reading a newly published biography of Betty Stam, who had been murdered along with her husband by a brigade of Chinese Communists. Betty still fondly remembered the time Betty Stam and her parents had stayed at the Howards’ house in Germantown. She also still vividly remembered the time when her mother told her of Betty and John Stam’s murders. Having known Betty Stam made the biography come alive to Betty Howard. As she read, she came across a passage in which Betty Stam had written:
Lord, I give up all my own plans and purposes, all my own desires and hopes, and accept Thy will for my life. I give myself, my life, my all utterly to Thee to be Thine, forever. Fill me and seal me with Thy Holy Spirit. Use me as Thou wilt, work out Thy whole will in my life at any cost, now and forever.
Betty copied Betty Stam’s prayer at the front of her Bible and read it often. And when she read it, she thought about Betty and her sacrifice.
In many ways it was easier for Betty to identify with the adult missionaries who came through their home than it was to make friends with the other girls in her class at public school. As she finished ninth grade, Betty began to feel more and more like an outsider. None of the girls in her class appeared to be interested in spiritual things, while Betty longed for the opportunity to build strong Christian friendships.
Great-Uncle Charley Trumbull, the general editor and owner of the Sunday School Times, inadvertently fueled Betty’s aspirations for something better. On his return from a trip to Florida, Uncle Charley brought back the yearbook from a school for missionary children called the Hampden DuBose Academy, located in Orlando. Betty studied the exotic-looking green-tinted cover of the yearbook. She opened the book and read every word and then studied every photo. It all looked wonderful. The school was located on 105 acres of land, which included 40 acres of landscaped campus and 8 acres of orange groves. Classes were held in an old mansion. Betty could picture herself in the photos, sitting primly in the living room with its dark wood paneling, or gathering to sing around the piano. The outdoor photos captivated her too. In one photo, formally dressed boys and girls sat under huge oak trees draped with Spanish moss on the shore of a glistening lake. Class outings showed students laughing on the white-sand shores of their own island in the middle of a lake, bowling in the bowling alley, and wandering down a path ablaze with azaleas.
Betty also read about how Pierre DuBose, the school’s founder and principal, had been a missionary child in China and had returned alone to the United States for high school. But things had not gone well for him with his schooling, and he vowed to establish a school where missionary children could feel cared for and loved—a real home away from home. The staff considered their careers a call from God, and although the school paid their room and board, each staff member had to trust that God would meet all of his or her other personal needs.
It all seemed so romantic to Betty, who begged her parents to allow her to get the rest of her high school education at the academy. As much as her parents may have wanted her to go, however, the fact was that they did not have the money to send her to the Hampden DuBose Academy.
Then Great-Uncle Charley died unexpectedly in 1941, and this changed many things for the Howard family. Betty’s father became the general editor for the Sunday School Times and received a substantial raise in salary to go with the new position. As a result, the decision was made that Betty and her older brother Philip could both go to boarding school. Philip decided to attend the Prairie Bible Institute in Alberta, Canada, but Betty was firm in her desire to go to the Hampden DuBose Academy in Orlando at the beginning of the next academic year. Next year, she determined, her picture would be taken under those Spanish moss–laden oak trees.
On December 7, 1941, soon after Uncle Charley’s death, the Howard family was as shocked as the rest of the country to learn of a massive Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Many American servicemen had been killed in the attack, many aircraft had been destroyed, and ships had been sunk. Soon afterward President Franklin Roosevelt announced on the radio that the United States was now officially at war with Japan and Germany. America had finally entered the war that had been raging in Europe and parts of East Asia for over two years.
Despite the fact that the United States was now at war, in September 1942, fifteen-year-old Betty Howard stood on the platform of the Philadelphia Railway Station, clad in a beige felt hat, blue woolen dress, thick stockings, and brown pumps—all suitable attire for fall in New Jersey. She took a deep breath, and once she had climbed aboard the Tamiami Champion and found her berth, she looked out of the railway car window. Her whole family had come to see her off. As she peered out the window, Betty suddenly felt engulfed with the reality of the situation. For the first time she was leaving home—alone. None of her brothers or sisters were with her in the train car, and she was headed farther away from home than she had ever been in her life. Not only that, she would not see or talk to any of her family for nine long months. It was too far to travel home for Christmas or Easter and too expensive to make long-distance telephone calls. It was a sobering moment for Betty as the locomotive hissed and slowly pulled the train away from the station.
It was an overnight trip south on the train, and in Jacksonville, Florida, the Tamiami Champion was split in two, with one train going to Miami on Florida’s east coast and the other train going to St. Petersburg on Florida’s west coast. Betty rode aboard the train headed for St. Petersburg. As the train passed through central Florida, it stopped in Orlando.
With the sun up, Betty stared out the window at a landscape unlike any she had ever seen before. There wasn’t a hill in sight, just flat land. Some of the land was pastureland with cows grazing on it, but much of the land was covered in spindly pine trees. Small lakes and swamps seemed to be everywhere. Betty cringed when she thought about the many alligators that probably inhabited the lakes and swamps.
Finally, in the early afternoon, the train came to a halt at Church Street Station in Orlando. Betty was anxious as she climbed down from the train, gripping her suitcases tightly. About ten other people were disembarking the train in Orlando, and Betty’s stomach churned as she imagined what would happen if no one was there to meet her.
A blast of humid air enveloped Betty as she stepped onto the station platform. It felt to her like she had just walked into a steamy shower room, and her woolen dress clung to her. Betty looked around. Fortunately, it took only a minute to spot a tall, thin woman wearing a long, white dress. The woman had spotted Betty, too, and made a beeline for her.
“Hello,” the woman said, beaming. “You must be Betty Howard. I’m Miss Andy. Welcome! We’re so glad you are here!”
Betty smiled back. She hoped she looked glad to be there.
Miss Andy effortlessly took Betty’s suitcases and walked to a nearby parked station wagon. She loaded the bags into the back of the vehicle and told Betty to climb into the front seat. “We call the car ‘Long John,’” she said, smiling. “I expect you’re a little bit overwhelmed right now, but I know you’ll love the academy.” Miss Andy beamed as she started up the station wagon and drove off. “Tell me, how was your train ride?”
Despite her shyness, Betty found herself chatting with Miss Andy as they drove along.
Soon Miss Andy pulled the station wagon into the driveway of a beautiful old mansion located south of downtown Orlando. Betty settled into the dorm and then went to explore her new surroundings. Instantly the pages of the yearbook came alive. There was the goldfish pond in front of the veranda, and Betty walked down the azalea path. The school enrolled children from first grade through twelfth grade, and sure enough, Betty soon came upon the little girls’ playhouse. Several girls were treating their dolls to a tea party. They smiled at Betty and asked her name.
