Daily Sitka Sentinel

Services to be Aug. 23 For Betsy Trainor, 65

Betsy Trainor

Betsy Baldwin (Dore) Trainor, 65, passed away August 13 in Sitka after a 23-year-long battle with cancer.
She never complained. She took very frequent trips to Seattle and always said “I’m not going to sit in a hotel room and feel sorry for myself.”
After her appointments or treatments she would ride the ferry to Bainbridge Island, take a train to Bellingham or visit a state park or lighthouse.
Funeral Mass will be 1 p.m. Friday, Aug. 23, at St. Gregory’s Catholic Church.
Betsy was born Nov. 13, 1953, in Waterville, Maine. Her father, Dr. Clarence Dore, and her mother, Marjorie, four sisters and brother were avid outdoor people, spending many hours boating, skiing, fishing and hunting. Betsy grew up running boats of all sizes and chainsaws, and building camps and netting fish. She was an excellent marksman and gunsmith.
She came to Sitka in 1972 to attend Sheldon Jackson College. Had she come a day earlier she could have ridden one of the Sitka-Japonski shore boats that were replaced by the O’Connell Bridge. She often quipped that she was teased that she was not a “True Sitkan” because she never rode the shore boats.
She completed the SJC Forestry Technician program. The hundreds of acres the college owned were an excellent training ground for learning to cruise timber, scale logs, perform silviculture projects, and learn surveying. She later attended the University of Maine School of Forestry and then returned to Sitka.
She went to work for the U.S. Forest Service in 1975. She quickly impressed the all-male timber management crew that she was more than capable of doing everything they could do – much of it better. She worked for Tony Hrebar, who was a wonderful boss, and helped him train new employees in how to use rifles for bear protection and how to care for and maintain firearms.
She was extremely proud of the work she did managing timber sales. Great efforts were made to design roads away from eagle trees and to protect salmon streams. Harvesting methods were chosen to cause the least amount of erosion.
Betsy was the first permanent woman Forestry Technician in the Alaska Region. She was a certified Timber Cruiser and Check Scaler. She later worked in the recreation department managing and maintaining the local campgrounds and picnic areas, building dozens of the large, heavy picnic tables, adding improvements to the Starrigavan bird viewing shelter and building many different projects.
Betsy married Michael Trainor, a maintenance mechanic with the Forest Service, on May 21, 1976.
As much as she liked her work with the Forest Service, what she wanted most was to raise a family and she wanted to be able to stay home with her kids. She left the agency in 1982 when her first daughter, Amanda, was born. Nicola followed in 1986. She loved family camping and taking her girls out in her 13-foot Whaler.
Betsy later worked part time for the Forest Service and at the time of her death was a geomagnetic technician contractor working at the Sitka Magnetic Observatory for the U.S. Geological Survey.
She was an avid birder, photographer and naturalist and was known for the loon calls she could make. She loved walking her dog.
Betsy was preceded in death by a brother, Peter Dore, who died in 1982.
She is survived by her husband, Michael Trainor, Sitka, and daughters Nicola Trainor of Sitka and Amanda Trainor, Kapaa, Hawaii.
In lieu of flowers the family suggests donations to Brave Heart Volunteers.