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By JIM BARBIERI
Betty Erxleben, who took the Wells County traits of caring and volunteering to new heights and led in the transformation of the Wells County Foundation into the heart and soul of a caring community, is the county’s Outstanding Citizen of the Year.
She will receive the prestigious award, joining the all-time ranks of revered leaders here, at the annual banquet meeting of the Wells County Chamber of Commerce-Economic Development on Jan. 23, 2006.
Well before that she will be in the limelight here, however,
This Thursday, Dec. 29, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., an open house in the Wells County Arts, Commerce & Visitors Centre, sponsored by the board of directors of the Wells County Foundation Inc., will honor Bette Erxleben for the occasion of her retirement.
As announced at the time, in her honor, the Foundation board has established the Dr. Walter and Bette Erxleben Donor-Advised Endowment Fund. (At her request, contributions may be made to that Fund in lieu of gifts.)
The meteoric rise of the Wells County Foundation since she took the reins back in 1991 became one of the most spectacular and meaningful developments in the community’s history.
Established in 1957, amid hopes of attorneys and others to have an avenue for people to donate or leave in wills and bequests to causes of community and fellow citizens, the Foundation for years was a constructive conduit for collections and dispensing special funds.
After the Palm Sunday Tornadoes of 1965 struck, donations for disaster aid here were channeled through the Wells County Foundation Inc.
The Foundation also was a suitable depository for the Children’s Catastrophic Fund that was mounted here in the 1980s toward a prospective liver transplant.
However, a prime hope and aim of foundations -- building endowment so that resources remain intact and grow but causes and needs are served by the income earned by the endowment -- was not taking place.
The Foundation DID have a good name and respect here, enough so that Bette Erxleben, who was not even looking for a job, agreed to become parttime director of the Foundation in 1991 after she was asked. She recalls that she was handed two notebooks at the time.
The Foundation, with resources that typically had been a few hundred thousand dollars at best over the years, started their steep climb, accelerating as Bette Erxleben became fulltime director over 10 years ago in 1995.
This year the resources or assets have topped $13.7 million.
But the remarkable and inspiring development has been that large numbers of causes of citizens and organizations here have been funded and are being funded for their futures and future services via foundations within the Wells County Foundation.
Causes from cemetery maintenance to scholarships are provided, with the benefits including tax deductible eligibility status of the Wells County Foundation.
Still, the reach of the Foundation amid Erxleben’s leadership has been out into the community and world on needs that can’t wait, in addition to those down the road.
As disasters of September 11th, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina of 2005 and others in between have hit, the Wells County Foundation has been out front with matching grants and coordination of assistance and mercy.
The same with a number of relief needs in Wells County.
The Foundation’s giant strides under Erxleben have been achieved largely by her forte of working well with others -- achieving quietly and almost shyly mammoth things by networking.
Back there in the early 1990s, there were just 15 foundations of the county type in Indiana.
Grasped readily by Erxleben, along with the Foundation board here, was the premiere opportunity offered in that period by the Lilly Endowment Inc. with its grants to match and build endowments, as well as generating scholarships and community service needs.
Other counties were catching the spirit as foundations sprouted. Because Bette Erxleben networked so well with others, more ideas and benefits were fostered here.
For all the many triumphs for better lives and a better community here and elsewhere, the crowning and most lasting accomplishments have been the many scholarships for students throughout Wells County. The benefits from these may magnify for generations and more tom come.
The Erxlebens were not from Bluffton or Wells County originally. They first came here in 1973 when Dr. Erxleben joined Caylor-Nickel here. They left in 1979 when Dr. Erxleben had the opportunity to head a clinic at Ann Arbor, Michigan, but they decided in 1981 to return to Bluffton, viewing Bluffton as where they would want to retire later.
Bette Erxleben had been born in Greencastle but her family moved to Indianapolis for her father’s job with General Motors when she was two years old.
Her life growing up in Indianapolis was a foundation for the direction of the great achievements over which she is now being honored.
The neighborhood was a special community of its own, a community of values and caring. Close to her house was a mixture of black, Jewish, Catholic and old German families -- and people of ages.
Bette Erxleben learned then to help the elderly without prospect of being paid. Her volunteerism was born young. But it also was an opportunity to learn and to benefit too from sharing. Integration of schools worked well in that neighborhood, where churches also were both spiritual and physical stalwarts, providing recreational and athletic programs too. Before girls basketball was to gain its foothold in high schools, she played on a church team that won city championships four years in a row.
She also was active in Girl Scouts, where she learned more about service and helping others.
After graduating from Shortridge High School in 1958, she went on to DePauw University as a French and Spanish major toward an expected career in teaching, then subsequently toward being a translator.
However, it was during those DePauw years that she met Walter Erxleben.
He was going on to medical school at the University of Michigan, and their first married year was spent at Ann Arbor, Mich. -- while Bette gained more for her future by a job she obtained as an administrative assistant in the clinical psychological graduate school of the university -- writing grants and working out tests.
The Erxlebens’ first son, Brian, was born there in 1965. After that, it was the Army for their future as Walter entered service and they went to Hawaii where he was stationed and worked in a hospital prior to being sent to Vietnam,
He served as an army doctor in Vietnam during 1967 and 1968, major years of that war, and came out with the rank of captain.
The next two years he was stationed at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis. Son Steven was born in 1969.
Walter Erxleben was a major when finishing the military service, after which they went to Grand Rapids, Mich., for three years -- the last stop before coming to Bluffton.
Here she was active promptly in education and literacy pursuits, including starting the Literacy Council and becoming its second president.
Also, in time, she became active in the Bluffton First Presbyterian Church.
But it was that opportunity that came to her to head the then-modest Wells County Foundation Inc. that gave Bette Erxleben the opening for her volunteer and caring spirit to flourish and spread contagiously.
Quietly doing things that make lives of others better now and for years and generations in the future became a way of life for Bette Erxleben, all while others were only talking about it.
That’s why she is to be honored as the Wells County Outstanding Citizen of the Year.
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