MCALLEN, Texas -- Betty Lou McDonald (Viering), 80, died May 7, at Rio Grande Regional Hospital in McAllen, Texas, due to complications from leukemia.
The service will be at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Glenwood Lutheran Church. Burial will be at St. Mary's Cemetery in Alexandria, following the service.
Visitation will be from 1 to 3 p.m. prior to the service at the church. Arrangements are by the Anderson Funeral Home in Alexandria.
She was born April 19, 1928, in Augusta, Kan., to John and Lois (Mead) Moore. She attended District 93 through eighth grade and Benson High School for one year. Then she went on to West Central School of Agriculture in Morris.
She married Archie Viering. She was a seamstress and launched a company to market patterns in the 1960s and 1970s. She also sewed something for the former First Lady Pat Nixon. She owned Betty's Boutique in St. Paul. She moved to Glenwood in 1972 and opened another Betty's Boutique store. In 1976, they began to winter in McAllen, Texas. She played drums in her husband's band. She also promoted fashion shows, worked as a marketing representative at Alamo Bank in Texas and arranged tours for winter Texans to Europe, Asia and elsewhere in the United States. Archie died in 1995. In 1998, she moved to Texas, year around. At 75 years old, she enrolled as a student at the University of Texas-Pan American where she studied English.
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She was the president of the National Chiropractic Association Auxiliary and president of the local American Legion Auxiliary in Glenwood. She was also the Welcome Wagon representative/coordinator in the tri-state area of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, during the 1960s.
She is survived by her children: Robert Hendrickson, Tom Henrickson, Sara (Anderson) Hanson and Lydia (Anderson) Nyquist; 12 grandchildren; and several great-grandchildren.
She was preceded in death by a brother and a sister.
