Multi Award Winning Vale Betty Sivyer (nee Lettman)

BY LINDA SIVYER

BETTY (Elizabeth Helen)

Lettman, the only daughter of Sid and Ethel (Ettie) Lettman, was born on 10 August 1927 at the Cooroy Nursing Home on Tewantin Road. The midwife who delivered Betty was in fact her great aunt/grandmother, Ellen Brittain. Sid’s mother died when he was 11 days old and Ellen and Bill Brittain raised him as their own. Ellen was Sid’s mother’s sister.

Betty grew up until eight years of age in the Brittain home, which was also the Cooroy Nursing Home, until Sid and Ethel moved to their home in Cedar Street, Cooroy, which today is situated on the corner of Elm and Pearl Streets.

Ellen and Bill Brittain purchased the Coronation Hall and on the sale of the hall, the Lettman house was built with the timber from the hall. This house is still standing today, some 88 years later.

Betty, as she was always known from a baby, went to Cooroy State School until a scholarship in Year 8. During her time at Cooroy State School she travelled by train, with other classmates, to Pomona Rural School for home science studies.

On completion of her primary schooling, Betty travelled each week from Cooroy to Nambour where she attended Nambour State High School and completed her junior certificate.

Betty and her long-time friend Edna Crees (now Smith) caught the train on a Monday morning and returned to Cooroy on Friday afternoon’s train.

Betty and Edna boarded together in a private home in Nambour for these two years.

Following her secondary education, Betty obtained a position as a telephonist in the Postmaster-General’s Department at the Cooroy Post Office, but had to resign on her marriage to Ron Sivyer on 8 February 1947.

Betty and Ron lived in Lismore and Brisbane for the first year or so of their married life but returned to Cooroy for a short time and eventually moved to Brisbane to live in February 1950 when I, their daughter, was two years of age.

Betty and Ron had three children: myself, Neil and Gary, and lived at Kedron from 1950 to 1980 when they moved to Alderley until 2016.

They then moved to Manly West where they lived together until Ron’s passing in July 2018. Betty stayed on in the house with me until her passing on 24 November 2022.

Betty’s mother was Ethel McLean who came to Cooroy as a six-month-old baby with her parents Alec and Elizabeth (nee Fenwick) McLean in December 1907. Betty’s great-grandparents, Robert and Hellen Fenwick, were already living at Tinbeerwah when Alec and Elizabeth arrived in Cooroy with their three daughters: Jean, Doris and baby Ethel. Betty’s clarity of mind and her knowledge of Cooroy history from a small child was impeccable right up until her death.