Elizabeth “Betty” Mackintosh Tenney died July 16 at her home on Bainbridge.
She was born Feb. 11, 1921 in Yakima to Dr. Peter Grant Mackintosh and Jessie (Ballard) Mackintosh.
She grew up with a love of books and animals, riding in her first little horse show at age 10.
She was in three Movie Tone newsreels in the 1930s: in 7th grade she was one of five Yakima girls to load a box of apples for President Roosevelt. A few years later, she was selected to go out to a sheep ranch during shearing. In 1939, she appeared as Yakima princess in a newsreel of the Ellensburg Rodeo.
In 1939, she graduated from Yakima High School and that fall entered the University of Washington.
In Annapolis for a wedding, she ran into Richard Tenney, a midshipman, who several years later was to become her husband.
Graduating cum laude in 1943, she went to work for a year at the facilities engineering department at Boeing.
In 1944 she returned to Yakima and joined the new CBS Radio affiliate KTYW, where she became chief copywriter for the station. As she described it, “We heard it all first when the war ended in Europe and shortly afterward when President Roosevelt died.”
In 1946, she got a job as night receptionist for WOV radio in New York, where she met such celebrities as Benny Goodman, Lucille Ball and Sarah Vaughan.
In November 1946, she married Richard Tenney in Yakima. The couple was stationed in Norfolk, Va., where he was the fire control officer on the Wyoming, and she taught first grade at the old Madison Elementary School.
He retired from the service and went to work at General Electric in Schenectady, N.Y., where she headed the continuity department at WSNY, a small radio station.
In December 1950, he was assigned to GE’s international division in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Three years later, they returned to the U.S., eventually settling in Spokane for 12 years, where he worked as an industrial engineer for Kaiser Aluminum.
There, she wrote articles for the Spokesman Review magazine and began selling her writing nationally to such publications as Westways, National Humane Review, Ford Times, Presbyterian Life, Child Life, Good Housekeeping, Sunset and Calling All Girls.
She also volunteered for the PTA, the Presbyterian church, the garden club and political campaigns.
In 1957, she won a design contest held by McCall’s magazine, which built and furnished the Tenneys’ new dining room. McCall’s later sent her to Washington, D.C. as one of 50 delegates to its first Congress on Better Living.
In 1968, the family was transferred from Spokane to Walnut Creek, Calif., where they settled for 28 years.
Renting an office in town, she wrote and sold articles and stories to McCall’s, American Heritage and Cobblestone, one of which was picked up by textbook publisher Merrill Publishing, for whom she became a freelance writer.
In her later years she wrote articles about Margaret Herrick and Eleanor Roosevelt, both of whom she had once met.
The couple moved to Bainbridge Island in 1996.
She is survived by her husband, Richard, of Bainbridge Island; two sons, Douglas of Seattle, and Peter and his wife Tracy of Covington; daughter Karen of Silverdale, one brother; two sisters-in-law; five grandchildren; four nieces and nephews and several cousins.
Remembrances may be made to Hospice of Kitsap County, P.O. Box 3416, Silverdale, WA 98383.
A family memorial luncheon will be held at Paradise on Mt. Rainier. Her ashes will be scattered in a favorite meadow, among the wildflowers.
