Betty Blaska, baptized Elizabeth Rose Blaska, will be remembered this morning at St. James Church and forever by those who knew and loved her. That includes siblings, David, Michael, William, Jane, and Richard; her father, Jerome; and her mother, Helen, who greets her in heaven. Plus a crop of nieces and nephews, Max, Amanda, Jared, Ashley, Amber, Olivia, David, Jason, and Jacqueline. Betty died at her home in Madison earlier this week. She was born on Flag Day, June 14, 1951, in Sun Prairie, WI, the third of six children in a hard-working family in the farming and politics business. There were all kinds of barns and corn cribs, in which to set up imaginary housekeeping and school days for her many dolls. Brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins, worker bees and visitors from the outside world buzzed through her life, imparting their impressions of life's joys, disappointments, and mysteries. Betty was great in school; God gave her the brains and she did the rest. She was a National Merit Scholar at Sun Prairie High School, went right after a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Wisconin Madison and then soaked up a Master's Degree from the University of Iowa, her mother's native land. Site did that, all the while fighting through a bipolar disorder in a family too busy to notice and too slow to understand, like much of the world then. But a little less so now, thanks to Betty. She applied what she learned in school and what she experienced in life by working for the Wisconsin Department of Health and Social Services. More recently, she was as an advocate for the mentally ill. She achieved national recognition; people around the country awaited her presentations. She even formed her own group composed of fellow fighters, called Prevail. She was honored by the Dane County Alliance for the Mentally Ill for that advocacy. As much as we may have tried, in our own ways, we could never seem to give Betty all the love she needed when she was alive, so we're going to keep trying. If you would like to help us, come to St. James Church, where she taught catechism to kids, after 8:30 a.m. this Saturday morning. It's at 1128 St. James Court, Madison (near Meriter Hospital, off Brooks St.) Father Douglas Duschack will help us conduct the memorial service at 10:00 a.m. WSJ 8/23/1997