Betty Gene (Kuykendall) Austin, age 93 years and 10 months, was born in Fontain, Ark. on May 22, 1930, to Scott and Hattie (Spicer) Kuykendall. One of seven children, Betty grew up on a plantation in Arkansas where her father was a sharecropper and her mother cared for elderly parents, raised the children and played piano at the local church.