Still a Mountaineer
One could say that Anthony Betonte has traded one chain of mountains for another.
Betonte, a WVU alumnus and former WVU Extension Service employee, is teaching at an Indian reservation in the White Mountains of Arizona.
"I'm still a Mountaineer," he says. "When I tell people I live in Arizona, they think of hot, dry weather and flat terrain. But I live in the mountains."
The 50-year-old Betonte teaches world history and practical science to eighth-grade students at the Whiteriver Middle School on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. The reservation is home to 15,000 White Mountain Apaches.
Located in east-central Arizona near the New Mexico border, the White Mountains range from 6,000-11,000 feet in elevation. Whiteriver Middle School, which serves more than 700 students in grades six through eight, is 5,280 feet (one mile) above sea level. By comparison, Spruce Knob, West Virginia's highest point, is 4,861 feet.
Betonte was born
in Clarksburg, W.Va., and raised in nearby Nutter Fort. He spent
much of his boyhood at his grandmother's residence in Rockford.
"An aunt told me about an Indian mound at Rockford," he remembers. "I always tell the kids I teach about that."
After graduating from high school, Betonte chose to attend WVU, earning a B.A. in history in 1970.
"When I first went to WVU, I lived in old Boreman Hall," he recalls. "One of things I remember is being a part of Student Action for Appalachian Progress. We did tutoring out at Cassville. That was one of the first places where I worked with people. I remember some of the old families there. I remember the old settlement houses at Osage and Scotts Run."
Betonte did some traveling and worked at various jobs after leaving WVU. His experiences included four years in an aboriginal community in Australia. He eventually returned to WVU, earning a master's degree in foreign languages in 1983.
"I was a more serious student the second time around," he says. "After spending four years in an aboriginal community without understanding the language, I decided to study foreign languages so that I could adapt easier to different cultures."
After obtaining his graduate degree, Betonte worked for the WVU Extension Service as a 4-H Extension Agent in Boone County from 1983-88.
"Some of my fondest memories from that time had to do with setting up the community center at Prenter," he says.
He was employed at Penn State University before moving to Arizona with his wife, Hilde, a public health nurse.
Betonte says he enjoys life on the reservation.
"People want to really make something of themselves here," he says. "The kids really work hard. They really want to build some kind of life for themselves." His foreign language degree is also beginning to pay off.
"It has allowed me to recognize mistakes children make when they speak in English," he says. "I'm hoping to be able to write a curriculum so we can do part of my world history class in Apache."
Betonte returns to West Virginia when he can to visit family. His mother, Dorothy Betonte, lives in Bridgeport, and several relatives reside in Harrison and Marion counties.
One such visit was at Christmas, when the WVU football team was in Tucson to play Missouri in the Insight.com Bowl.
Although Betonte had already made plans to spend the holidays with his mother, he arranged for 200 of his students and co-workers to attend the Dec. 26 bowl game. The Indian reservation is about 200 miles northeast of Tucson.
"I wish I could have seen the ball game," he says. "It would have been fun to have been there, cheering the Mountaineers on. But at the same time, it was more important to be with my mother because we don't get that much time to be together."
—Jim Davis