Betsy Roellchen

Long time Kalamazoo resident Betsy Ross Roellchen passed away quietly on June 17, 2025. Betsy was born in Glen Ellyn, IL on July 5, 1938 and grew up in Dowagiac and Bronson, MI.

After two years of college at Eastern Michigan University, she began her love of teaching in a one-room rural school with 18 children in grades K to 8. Returning to college, she completed her BA degree at Central Michigan University in 1961. During the next three years, while teaching in Albion, MI, she learned of the difficulties handicapped children faced by being home schooled or institutionalized and resolved to see impaired children receive an appropriate education. Betsy enrolled in graduate school at Western Michigan University receiving her MA in 1964 and began her career devoted to helping special needs children. For the next 35 years she worked in varied special education assignments in Ypsilanti, Hastings, and Kalamazoo where she loved and was loved by hundreds of challenged children.

In retirement she devoted herself to antique hunting and gardening. She raised large quantities of vegetables and fruits which she preserved. She was especially proud of the jams and jellies she shared with family and friends.

Betsy was predeceased by her husband, Thomas Roellchen, her parents, Frederic and Gertrude Ross, and survived by her brothers, John and Frederic Ross, and her longtime caregiver, Gloria Nichols. Interment will be in the Coldwater, MI cemetery.