Albertine "Betty" Jackson

Albertine “Betty” Jackson, age 82, of Savanna, Illinois, died Friday, July 7th, 2006, in Big Meadows Nursing Home in Savanna. A Memorial Service has not been scheduled. The date will be announced in the local papers.
Betty is survived by her brothers Dieter and Gunter, her sister Erna, her children Ilona, Frank, and Edina, and her grandchildren Keith, Rachel and William. Betty’s husband Johnnie Jackson passed away in 2002.
Betty was born Albertine Weissenborn on April 8, 1924, in Untergeis,
Germany. She was assigned during World War II to a youth work force. She spent five months as a farmhand in rural Poland and seven months as a
streetcar conductor in Breslau, Poland. Later, she was drafted into the German Luftwaffe as a switchboard operator. Her brother George was drafted as a soldier and sent to battle in the Ukraine area of Russia. He died there.
Toward the end of the war, the Baltic Sea region in which she worked came under heavy Allied bombing. She transferred to the North Sea area, where British Troops captured her in 1945. She was soon released and spent two years working her way back to her hometown of Oberaula in central Germany.
She met Sgt. Johnnie Jackson, her future husband, in 1947 during his first tour of duty in post-war Germany. Albertine became a U.S. Citizen in 1958.Betty and Johnnie moved to Savanna in 1964. While he managed the mess hall at the Savanna Army Depot, she found employment at the Eaton Corporation in Savanna, where Betty earned a reputation for being one of the plant’s
fastest and most accurate workers. Supervisors relied upon her to train other workers and to work extra shifts when others could not. She retired from Eaton in 1987.
Betty raised her children to think independently, to be responsible as well
as honest, and to try to leave the world a better place. She was a happy, outgoing, heart-felt woman who survived extraordinary times. Betty was loved and she will be missed.