Betty Ann Wagner

Betty Ann Wagner was born in Danville, Iowa, where her parents Elmer Chester Wagner (23 November 1897 - 5 November 1932) and Ann (Annie) Mary Wagner-Dunn (1 October 1896 - 17 July 1967) owned a farm.^[1] When she was seven years old, her father died. Her mother was on her own from then on, but found work as a teacher. Betty Ann and her younger sister Juanita Wagner (18 September 1929 - 24 December 2001) helped their mother on the farm.^[2]

In the school year 1939-'40, their teacher Birdie Mathews took the initiative to have her pupils correspond with schoolchildren abroad. She had made several trips around Europe and also visited the Netherlands. There she probably met Martha von der Möhlen, who was an English teacher at the Municipal Lyceum for Girls in Amsterdam.^[3] After returning to America, she started a 'programme of international correspondence'. From Europe, she had brought a list with names of schoolchildren who wanted to correspond. Juanita is said to have chosen Anne Frank's name from this list.^[4] Since only Margot Frank received English lessons from Miss Von der Möhlen, it is also plausible that Betty Ann and Margot were first paired together and, as a result, so were their younger sisters. In the letter Margot send back to Betty Ann, she thanked Juanita for het letter and wrote that not she, but Anne would answer it.^[5]

In early 1940, Betty Ann and Juanita sent their first letters to Margot and Anne. These original letters have not been preserved. Margot replied on 27 April 1940. In her letter to Betty Ann, she wrote about her family, school and hobbies. She also wrote about what it was like to live in the Netherlands and the threat of war: "We often listen to the radio, as times are very exciting, having a frontier with Germany and being a small country we never feel safe."^[5]

When Betty Ann received Margot's letter in early May 1940, she wrote back immediately. On 10 May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands. The fact that Anne and Margot were German-Jewish refugees was not known to the Wagner sisters in Danville. They no longer received replies to their letters and worried about how their pen pals fared during the war.^[6]

Betty Ann's family moved several times during the war in search of work. First to nearby Burlington, only to return here after a short stay in Denver, Colorado. At the end of the war in the summer of 1945, Betty Ann moved with her mother to Rock Island, Illinois. She found work as a schoolteacher in the nearby town of Milan.^[7]

After the war, Betty Ann tried again to contact her and Juanita's pen pals in the Netherlands. She received a long letter from Otto Frank, explaining that his family had had to go into hiding, that they had been arrested after twenty-five months, and that his wife and daughters had died in a concentration camp. This letter has not been preserved, but on 6 September 1945, Otto Frank wrote to his mother that he was very emotional while writing it.^[8] Betty Ann recalled that she had also let her school students read Otto Frank's letter, to teach them about the war.^[9]

Betty Ann moved with her mother and sister to Sierra Madre, California, in the late 1940s. In 1980, she founded the organisation Wayfarers Ministries, which helped establish libraries and sent books to missionaries.^[10]

Source personal data.^[11] Address: Danville, Iowa, USA.