“I am a woman of spirit, the source of abundant good and capacity to love; I am part of everything! Unfolding!  My Daddy Brought Me Up To Be Good, August 1999. Poetry lines by Bette Louise Waters

Waters passed away November 20, 2023 in the care of Mesilla Valley Hospice. She was the first born of Annie Elizabeth Hood and Perry Elmer Waters, on October 24, 1932, in Atkinson County Georgia, the oldest of three children, Raymond Landon Waters (deceased), Robbie Lee Waters Bratcher (deceased), half-brothers, Benny Ralph Waters of Washington, NJ, Lyman Darrell Waters (deceased), and half-sister, Olidia Ann Waters Carter of Hazlehurst, GA.

She was married to Billy Archey McClellan and was the mother of Charles Michael McClellan (deceased), Gordon Brook McClellan of Deming, NM and Billy Archey McClellan, Jr of Las Cruces, NM. 

After raising her family, she went back to school, graduating from the Medical University of South Carolina in 1982 with a degree in Nurse Midwifery. She practiced midwifery in South Carolina, Florida, Michigan and New Mexico. Traveling for continuing education required by her profession, she discovered the Southwest, moved to Las Cruces and retired from the practice of midwifery eight years later.

She had many lifelong passions, but her most important one was books. During her years of working with pregnant women, she began collecting their stories of having gone into hospitals to have their babies and having been cruelly mistreated by the male oriented medical system.  She published their stories in My Mother Was A Spaceship.  This book and her other books about women’s issues are archived at Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, Harvard University. Her book Massage During Pregnancy is in its Fourth Edition, and has been distributed in Europe and Australia.

To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Bette Louise Waters, please visit our floral store.