Betty Steinhoff

Betty Steinhoff is a survivor who had to work hard all her life to earn a living. Although she wasn’t born in Evansville, she was a productive community member who worked long hours as a single parent, running a business and raising four children.

Betty Steinhoff, née Elizabeth Helen Agnes Ducklow, was born August 1, 1934, and raised at Elmcrest farm near Oconomowoc, WI. Oconomowoc is an Indian word that means “I can no mo’ walk.” That fact is ironic in and of itself, as Betty had the misfortune to be born without both hip sockets, making it difficult for her to walk during her entire life. During her adult years, she owned and operated The Beverage Mart, a liquor store on the north end of Evansville. Her life during those years was very difficult and challenged by a couple of tragedies. But she made it work and raised four children on her own.

Betty grew up on her parents’ farm of 120 acres that her grandfather purchased in 1917. They raised sheep and steers, had a dairy herd of fifteen cows, and grew some cash crops. As a farm girl, Betty showed Oxford Down Sheep for nine years, winning Junior & Senior Class events at the Waukesha County Fair and the Wisconsin State Fair. She also earned the right to enter the International Livestock Show in Chicago, where she won the highest accolade of excellent quality that few ever achieve: the coveted Purple Ribbon!

Betty is also a gifted singer and pianist. While attending Oconomowoc High School, she was a choir member, singing high soprano. She was so talented she was invited to spend three weeks at a music clinic on the UW-Madison campus. Even more impressive is that she was chosen to represent Waukesha County singing at the Wisconsin State Centennial Fair in 1948. A choir comprised 72 singers, with one singer from each county. In addition, she also served as a musician for Jobs Daughters Services, Bethel 35. Betty has a lot of musical talent.

In 1952, she graduated high school and enrolled at UW-Whitewater. Betty took all of the business and accounting classes that they offered. She wanted to be a bookkeeper. After graduation, she took a job at the Waukesha Technical School. There, she quickly rose to the role of comptroller, during which time she was in charge of the budget, payroll, social security, health care, and retirement plans of seventy employees.

As a young, single woman, Betty and her three best friends, Grace, Carolyn, and Bev, would go out dancing four nights a week. One evening, Grace, who worked at Pabst Farms in Oconomowoc, happened to mention that a new guy had just been hired who was friendly and good-looking. His name was Gerald Steinhoff. With the girls’ encouragement, Grace invited him to an upcoming dance, and he quickly became a part of the group. Soon after, he and Carolyn hit it off and began dating. Unfortunately for Carolyn, her parents didn’t like Gerald. So Betty, the only one of the four friends who had a car, would pick up Carolyn at her parents' home and take her to dances where she could meet up with Gerald, who drove separately. Sadly for Carolyn, three years later, her married sister died. Not only that, Carolyn’s parents wanted her to marry her sister’s widower, so they pressured her to break up with Gerald, which she reluctantly did. By this time, Grace and Bev were also married. So, as Betty puts it, “She was the last caboose on the train.” In other words, Betty and Gerald were the last unmarried members of the group, so they started dating.

Soon after that, Gerald transferred to a branch of Pabst Dairy in Paoli, where he worked as an assistant butter maker. They had been dating for some time and were getting serious. Since her youth Betty wore a black onyx ring on her left hand, with the idea that it would stay there until she was given an engagement ring. On February 20th, before they went to Nob Hill in Madison for dinner, Gerald pulled a ring out from the car’s sun visor, removed her onyx ring, and replaced it with an engagement ring. A wedding was soon in the works.

Betty in her wedding dress

Betty was tired of her job, and all her friends were married by this time, so she moved to Paoli after their wedding on September 10, 1960. She and Gerald went “up North” for a week-long honeymoon. Upon their return, they moved into a rental house in Paoli. Gerald kept his job at Pabst Dairy, and Betty became a housewife. The children started arriving shortly afterward. Betty had four children within five years: Irma, Rudolph, Peter, and Wayne.

In March 1965, Betty and Gerald decided to buy a farm northeast of Brooklyn. Gerald came up with a very “creative” financing scheme. He applied for and received unsecured loans from five nearby financial institutions. Using the loans as a down payment, he approached the owner of a 120-acre farm he wished to purchase and negotiated a land contract with the seller. Gerald was a savvy businessman!

Betty and Gerald immediately bought week-old beef calves, which they raised to 400 pounds before selling them at a good price. The Oconomowoc Canning Company came in and planted peas on the farm after Gerald had harvested the hay he used to feed the beef cattle. Three years later, Gerald wanted to buy 50 milking cows, but with four babies and a wife taking care of them all day, no one could help him on the farm. Soon after, they made a difficult decision and sold the farm. Betty cried all the way to Evansville.

They headed to Evansville because Gerald had heard about a liquor store for sale there. Ray Knapp was the owner but hadn’t even listed it yet. When Ray purchased it in 1957, it was a gas station, which he promptly converted to a liquor store. He later added an addition and opened a men’s clothing store. Later, he converted the clothing store into a house where he lived.

Betty toured the building just before she and Gerald bought it on July 1, 1968, and immediately renamed it The Beverage Mart. The building was a liquor store on the north end and a small living quarters on the south end. By this time, all the children were attending school in Evansville. Since there were only two bedrooms, Gerald and the three boys squeezed into one room, and Betty and Irma settled into the other. Later on, the breezeway was enclosed into another bedroom, so the boys had one room, Irma had the second, and Betty and Gerald had the third.

But then tragedy struck. On April 17, 1969, Gerald came into the house for a cup of coffee and he mentioned to Betty that his shoulder hurt badly. He walked into the kitchen. Betty was sitting in the living room knitting when she heard a big thump. Gerald had collapsed on the floor and died of a heart attack. Today, Betty says that, in a way, it was a blessing that he died right away because she couldn’t have taken care of him and the four kids.

They had only owned the business and the building for ten months. Betty immediately closed The Beverage Mart for a week to bury Gerald and had very little time to consider her prospects. Ray Knapp graciously offered the down payment back and a chance to cancel the purchase. Betty firmly replied, “No, thank you, I’m staying.” The liquor store was open from 9:00 AM - 9:00 PM six days a week and Sundays from 12:30 PM - 9:00 PM. So, for the most part, Betty worked those hours except when she needed to watch the children at school events, attend family gatherings, or run errands. For those times, she drew from a small group of men and women who would fill in for her for a few hours. That left Sunday morning to go to church, have the children attend Sunday School and have lunch at the Village Square restaurant before opening the store at 12:30 PM.

In the store, Betty could be found doing all the jobs Gerald used to do, among them restocking the inventory. As the children grew older, she assigned jobs to each of them. Rudy and Peter stocked the store. Wayne took out the garbage. Irma watched the boys while cooking and cleaning. Once in a while, Betty’s parents would come over from Oconomowoc to run the store, cook, and take care of the kids. That allowed Betty much-needed breaks during which she could get away for a few days. Once, she was even able to go on a car trip: she took the Lake Michigan Ferry from Milwaukee to Ludington, MI, and drove north to Sault Ste. Marie around Lake Superior and then back down to Evansville. She remembers it fondly. 

Being a widowed mother raising young children while running a business for 80 & 1/2 hours each week, Betty had her hands full and needed some help. As luck would have it, the family lived right across the street from Lake Leota Park. During the summertime, the kids spent most of their free time joining every activity offered. All of the youngsters joined the swim team. Sue Gray became a big sister to Irma. Rudy, Peter, and Wayne joined the Boy Scouts under Scout Master Bill Hartje, and each became Eagle Scouts. The boys also played little league baseball. As they got older, her now teenage children found part-time jobs. Irma worked at the Evansville Manor while attending Evansville High School. They all babysat, and the boys baled hay in the summer. Rudy and Peter worked at the swimming pool under Rick Hamacher. Wayne was in charge of Park Recreation under Duane Updike. All the children graduated from Evansville High School and went to college. On May 8, 2015, Betty suffered another loss as her son Wayne passed away.

Betty, being the frugal woman she was, somehow made ends meet by using her business income to pay the mortgage and the utilities. The business did okay for the first twenty years, but she did very well in the last ten years. She even opened a knitting shop that was operated through a drive-up window in the liquor store.

Some of Betty’s scariest times working at The Beverage Mart were the infrequent robberies. Once, a band of Gypsies (nowadays, we refer to them as Roma) showed up in four cars with four people in each. They parked across the street and walked over. They came in through the living quarters door and then entered the liquor store entrance. They were all middle-aged and dressed alike in Roma clothing. Rather than running away, Betty stood her ground at the cash register to protect the money. Forcibly, they stole the $50 that was in the office file before quickly leaving and driving off. Fortunately, they didn’t see the folder on the counter containing $250. Phew! During her 29 years owning The Beverage Mart, she was robbed five times.

Betty closed the liquor store for good and retired on April 10, 1997. Shortly after that, the Evansville City Council approved the sale of the business and inventory to grocery store owner Jim Kopecky. While the liquor store side of the building is closed, you can find Betty still living in her home on the south side of the building. She likes to do Search-A-Word, play Skip-Bo, and visit with her now-grown children and her grandchildren. 

Betty Steinhoff is a survivor who had to work hard all her life to earn a living. She had great success as a youngster showing sheep and as a musician. For a woman who was born without hip sockets and lost her husband after having four children, she had to work hard and rely on her children to help her. Although she wasn’t born in Evansville, she was a productive community member who worked long hours as a single parent, running a business and raising four children.