Betty Garbutt

We would like to share with all of our members, the recipient of the prestigious “Volunteer of the Year” for 2015 - 2016 is: Betty Garbutt.

This year at the RA Spring Volunteer Luncheon, we surprised our exemplary volunteer, Betty Garbutt with the news that she was the recipient of the UCSD Retirement Association’s Volunteer of the Year Award. We would like to introduce Betty to our members.

“I want to thank everyone for the great honor in awarding me the Volunteer of 2016 for the UCSD RA. This was a very unexpected but truly appreciated surprise.

As I ponder the activities that I have been able to experience since joining the organization it occurs to me that it is a long way from the child who grew up on a farm in North Yorkshire. Those early memories were shaped by the Second World War hiding under furniture during the bombing raids and keeping the house dark at all times at night. After the war it was an idyllic place for an only child to be and be nurtured by parents who both had a love of animals.

I chose nursing as a career and trained in Harrogate in Yorkshire and subsequently went on to train as a Nurse Midwife working in Edinthenburgh, Scotland. At that time my father was diagnosed with cancer and I came home to send the last year with him.

After his death everyone expected me to stay at the local hospital and work there but that did not appeal to me so I decided to apply to come to the USA. I had a colleague who had married a man in the Air Force and they had been stationed at Cherry Point N.C. so they put me in touch with them and they became my sponsors to come to the USA. I applied to Cornell and Columbia Presbyterian hospitals and liked the letter better from Cornell, so made my decision to join them in New York city and during my time there I changed from a country girl to a city girl!

My plan was to stay two years and Edinthen go to Australia but, as with many people who love their new country and all it’s vast experiences, I am still here after forty nine years! I moved to Orange County to join my sponsor during the time her husband was in Vietnam and answered a job in the newspaper working in nursing for a Pharmaceutical company and they moved me to Atlanta. I eventually went to work for the Department of Health in Nashville and spent twelve great years in nursing there and also developing a Nurse Midwifery service there in Tennessee.

I was then recruited to go to develop a program in Maternal Health in Sioux Falls and stayed there for two years before my mother became ill and I returned to the UK to be with her. After her death I came back to Nashville where I still have strong roots and friends and my “adopted’ family. It is a long story to tell how I came to San Diego but again, like many others , I came for a limited period of time twenty seven years ago and this where I will spend the rest of my life.

UCSD has become a very special place for me and the Retirement Assn is very much part of my affection for this place and time in my life. Again I want to thank everyone who has made that to be such a treasured time for me."