She realized the gravity of the situation when a Marine gave her a pistol saying, "You might need this." At age 18 she was part of a USO tour in the China Burma India Theater during World War II. When she was 17, Lynn auditioned to participate in United Service Organizations entertainment. Betty's grandfather, a railroad engineer, effectively served as her father figure from then on, until his death in Sacramento, California in 1959. She went with her mother to live with her mother's parents, Josie (née Hill) and George Andrew Lynn, who also resided in Kansas City.
įollowing her mother's breakup with Dailey, young Betty had little personal contact with her father. Their marriage is reported to have been a tumultuous one, with allegations that her father once threatened to shoot her mother in the abdomen when she was pregnant, and that after Betty's birth, he made additional threats that forced her mother on one occasion to hide in a locked closet to protect herself and her baby.
Prior to that, according to federal census records, her parents had separated and divorced before April 1930. Her mother, described as "an accomplished mezzo-soprano", taught Betty in her early childhood to sing and enrolled her in the Kansas City Conservatory of Music when she was only five years old. Her father was a civil engineer, who worked initially as a municipal employee for Kansas City and later as a private contractor. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1926, Betty Lynn was the only child of Elizabeth Ann ( née Lynn) and George A.
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