BETTY IRENE NEALE PAPERS

Betty Irene Overfield was born May 20, 1927 in Hiawatha, Kansas to Ira and Nellie Overfield. Betty's mother, Nellie, was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas October 9, 1907 to Frank and Nettie Price Beatty, who moved to Falls City, Nebraska where Nellie grew up.

Betty's father, Ira (Mike) Overfield, a farmer, was born in Kansas about 1906 to a native of West Virginia, Marland Overfield, and his German-born wife, Emma. Betty's parents, Ira and Nellie, married in Troy, Kansas on December 26, 1924. They lived on farms around Hiawatha, Kansas.

Betty graduated in 1945 from Hiawatha High School. She attended business college in Topeka, Kansas, before enrolling at the University of Kansas. She married Dory J. Neale Jr., of Topeka on September 18, 1948, at the First Baptist Church in Hiawatha, Kansas. Dory was a graduate of the Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington, Missouri. Betty worked for a time in the accounting department of Southwestern Bell Telephone Company in Topeka. Dory worked for the Neale Construction Company in Pontiac, Illinois while completing his engineering degree.

All three of Dory and Betty's children were born in Kansas: Dory Alan "Butch" (1949), Steven Michael (1951), and Scott.

Dory worked as an electrical engineer for the Martin Company, which prompted the family's move to Denver, Colorado. He worked on the company's missile project, which required frequent trips to Cape Canaveral, Florida. Dory and Betty divorced about 1971.

Betty Neale entered the world of politics as a precinct committeewoman in 1965, and in 1966 served as a delegate to the Colorado Republican Assembly. She was a district captain in 1969 and an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1972. In 1974 Neale announced her candidacy for the Colorado Legislature as a representative of the 14th House District (later the 10th), which covered most of southeast Denver, where she had resided since 1958. She was elected as a Republican legislator in 1974 during a time when the post-Watergate political climate favored Democratic candidates. Her constituents reelected her every two years until 1992 when she announced she would not seek a tenth term. During her eighteen years in the Colorado legislature Neale sponsored worker compensation reform guidelines; child support enforcement reform; an omnibus prison package; and a bill requiring employer/employee background checks in the child care industry.

In 1977, during her tenure as a representative, Neale served as the first woman on the Joint Budget Committee. That same year, she was named legislator of the year by the press and her fellow legislators. Governor Richard Lamm appointed Neale to the Colorado Commission on Child Support and the Colorado Commission on Children and Their Families. The Denver Board for the Developmentally Disabled named Neale Legislator of the Year in 1980. In 1987 the National Child Support Association named her their Legislator of the Year, and the Associated Press named her Legislator of the Year again in 1991.

In 1993 Mayor Wellington Webb appointed Neale Deputy Director of Finance for the City and County of Denver. She became a lobbyist for Denver in 1994 and continued in that role into 2002.