In 2001, Betty Staehr got married for a second time.
To the habitually ebullient Ausinite, it felt like a fairy tale come true. Husband. Job. Car. House on the lake. Sailboat.
“Shortly after that, things went crazy,” Staehr says. “He became very abusive. The breaking point wasn’t physical. It was when he spit in my face and said I was nobody.”
“He isolated me through the course of our marriage,” Staehr, 49, says. “Our circle of friends, he pushed away. I ended up with just a backpack and $100.”
At first, she sought refuge at her mother’s rural house in Yoakum.
“It wasn’t a good place to start over,” she says tentatively. “My mom told me: ‘I’m not going to be around forever. You need to get this together yourself.’”
So, on a Sunday, the homeless Staehr found herself on the steps outside the Salvation Army in downtown Austin. The office was closed, but she discovered a back entrance.
“They said that, if it was freezing that night, I could take a cot,” she says. “Two days later, I got a bed.”
The Salvation Army — along with groups such as Dressed for Success, Goodwill, St. Vincent de Paul, Trinity Center and St. Martin’s Lutheran Church — put Staehr back on track.
Today, she holds down a job at a podiatrist’s office, keeps a small apartment in South Austin and, just as importantly, volunteers for Mobile Loaves and Fishes and serves on the board of directors for Dressed for Success Austin, which provides interview suits and career advice to low-income women.
She’s also the subject of a short documentary film, “In Her Shoes,” which premiered at the State Theater and now circulates on the festival circuit. The title echoes her program which has collected more than 700 pairs of women’s shoes to assist Dress for Success.
“For some people, homelessness is a choice,” she says in a soft voice. “But you can start over. It can be done. I’m living proof.”
It could happen to anyone
Staehr enjoyed as normal a childhood as one could imagine. Her parents, now deceased, worked as school teachers and bus drivers. She has one sister, Sue Bennett, who lives in Cedar Park.
As a child, Staehr was outdoorsy and adventurous. She raised sheep for the Future Farmers of America club and indulged in make-believe. At school in nearby Cuero, she made average to good grades, played in the band and served as a flag girl.
After graduating in 1981, she attended Victoria College, then moved to Austin, where she took classes at Austin Community College.
Her first marriage lasted for two years. She worked at a primary care clinic for eight years, the an appraisal company for 13 years.
Why didn’t she turn to old friends when her second marriage turned into a horror movie?
“I didn’t want to bother them,” she says. “I wasn’t their responsibility. I needed to get control of my life.”
Goodwill, which later named Staehr, who slightly resembles former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to its Hall of Honor, provided help with resumes and job counseling.
“When you are homeless you don’t have access to ordinary things,” she says. “You can go to the library to use the computer, but only for an hour and it costs extra to print anything.”
She landed a spot in a four-plex near St. Edward’s University because the landlord took a chance even before she got the gig running a medical office.
She also ried to warn her second husband’s next wife.
“She didn’t listen at first,” she says. “But she finally asked him to leave. She wondered if I wanted the dog we had. I love dogs, but that would hurt so much, bring up so many memories.”
Staehr feels guilty she didn’t let the legal system work.
“For some reason, you think: ‘Oh, it could get better,’” she says. “I hear other women talk: ‘The first sign of this, I will be so out of here.’ But until you are in those shoes, you don’t know what will happen.”
One of the darkest moments came when her mother died while Staehr was living at the Salvation Army.
“That was like ‘Wow!’ Staehr says. “Buy she’s with me. Both of my parents are with me.”
Craig Sommer, former pastor at St. Martin’s, now serves as her life coach. She agreed to work with the documentary maker Brandy Amstel in order to help groups that focus on the homeless. The premiere, emceed by activist Carla McDonald, raised more than $60,000 for Dressed for Success.
“Society puts a lot of judgement on those who have fallen on hard times,” she says. “I still look in the mirror and ask: ‘How could you let this happen to you?’ My parents had a beautiful marriage. I thought I had a fairy tale (marriage). Actually, now is my fairy tale.”