Betty J. Hopkins, 93, of Sedalia, passed away Monday, December 11, 2023, at E.W. Thompson Health and Rehabilitation Center. She was a known Educator, Humanitarian, and International Ambassador.
Memorial services will be held at 2 P.M., Sunday, December 17, 2023 at McLaughlin Funeral Chapel in Sedalia. Inurnment will be in High Point Cemetery in Hughesville, MO. Memorials are suggested to the Betty Hopkins Scholarship Fund at either Smith-Cotton High School or Sacred Heart School in care of McLaughlin Funeral Chapel.
Betty was born April 6, 1930, in Kansas City, MO to the late Dr. Garnett and Mayme Klink Hopkins.
Betty attended school here in Sedalia, graduating from Smith-Cotton High School with the class of 1948. She went on to graduate from Central Missouri State College at Warrensburg, where she became a medical technologist at Research Hospital in Kansas City, MO.
In 1961, Betty began teaching high school biology and physiology at Smith Cotton High School. In 1966, Betty earned a master’s degree from Colorado College in Colorado Springs, CO. Her teaching career continued for the next thirty-four years, which included 12 years as a teacher in Germany, working for the Department of Defense. She received a grant from the National Science Foundation to teach in Austria. In 1976, Betty became a member of the A.F.S., teacher exchange program, enabling her to teach in Africa, Thailand, and China.
Upon her return to the United States, she would work at the Y.M.C.A., in Estes Park, Colorado and Silver Bay, New York for the summers. While working at the Y.M.C.A. Convention Center, she met a young man named Nicholas Musyoka from Kibera, Kenya, Africa. She continued to correspond with Nick, learning more about the conditions of Kibera and the efforts required to help with the living conditions of that area.
While in Africa, she saw the great need for clean drinking water. She heard that Rotary International next big project was to dig a well for the rural areas of the world where water is in short supply. Betty brought back the project to her local chapter, and they donated enough to get a well dug.
She traveled to Niger with Rotary International as part of the Polio Plus campaign to eradicate polio.
Betty loved to travel and loved her friends. She traveled most of her adult life in various endeavors, visiting more than sixty countries on all five continents.
Betty was a member of the First Christian Church of Sedalia.
Betty’s sponsorship and volunteer activities include Red Cross, Children’s Therapy Center, Boys and Girls Club, Trail’s End, Liberty Center, Bothwell Hospital, Scholarships to State Fair Community College, Scott Joplin Festival, Washington School Mentoring, The Sedalia Symphony, The Daum Museum FIT (Forty Hour Intern Training, United Way, Girl Scouts, and Rotary International.
Betty is survived by her great friends, who looked after her, David and Emma Curry and their children of Sedalia.
She was preceded in death by a twin brother William G. “Bill” Hopkins and her brother Dr. Thomas S. Hopkins.