Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 29

THE DETROIT FREE PRESS Women9-s Society SECTION SUNDAY, AUGUST 13, 1950 BETTY KEEPS BUSY One Puppet Show: 4 Months' Work BY PAULINE STERLING Free Pr Staff Writr If Betty Rypeam wins the Welling Trophy and becomes the number one Sailorette at the Detroit Yacht Club this summer, ehe'll be adding just one more link to her long chain of laurels. Never satisfied at doing things moderately well or in small numbers, Betty, at 23, excels in more projects than most people could boast of starting in a lifetime. Professionally, she has made a name for herself producing marionette shows and recently completed a 13-week series for television. TO BETTY, putting on a show, doesn't mean learning to manipulate the strings and assembling the props. It means making and dressing all the marionettes, building the stage furniture (scaled to size) and maknig everything else that goes on the set.

Sometimes it takes as long as "four months to get tvery-thing ready. Betty's workshop, In the basement of her hnme Lakepolnte, is a hodgepodge of tools, modeling clay, odd and ends of plywood and sugar pine, plaster of parls, plastic wood, tubes of paint, glue, scraps of cloth, marionettes, gadgets, stage sets, backdrops and stage curtains. All this, plus hours of tedious work, go into the making of one show. Even then, Betty's work isn't finished. She's always one or more of the voices in the play.

To do a good job of speaking the lines, she took a special course in speech. That, in itself, sounds like a full time job but not for Betty. -s I i i 5, I -'-J -r "'It 1 jr I 3 I Ji'v xir I $tfwJJ i -SJSNf ff i --f "-'fjfc jr --i y' 4" 4712 SHE HAS her own loom and has made several rugs. When she marries and has her own home, she expects to weave all the material for her draperies and upholstery. Betty is as nautical as she is artistic.

Every summer, since she was 3 months old, she has lived on "Seaway," at the Detroit Yacht Club. Her father, Fred W. Rypsam, built the 40-foot cruiser 36 years ago. She learned to swim when she was 3 and has a string of medals, won in competitive swimming during her teens. Now she has given up swimming for water skiing.

SIX YEARS AGO, Betty started sailing. She crewed on on an boat for three years, then started out for herself. She won the Welling Trophy last year and is well on the TURN TO PAGE 4 Betty Rypsam creates characters for her marionette shows, dresses them, supplies the voice. Arms and legs are whittled from scraps of wood Job's Circus, Research Geologist Finds 1 1 "5s I I I had come to see, at first hand, how a geologist works. And I learned immediately that Miss Martin does not.

spend more than a fraction of her time in the field pounding up rocks. Crusading for "geology as the foundation for all good works in conservation," is her primary field work. That was her business at Munuscong at the Northerr College of Education Conservation Laboratory. Teachers from the Upper Peninsula and students at thf College had come there for two-week's credit course ir conservation, and Miss Martir was the first lecturer. I '-'w 'i -1- T-ft BY NANCY AYER Free Press Staff Writer Research geologist is a stern title.

It speaks of scholarly looks, microscopes and starched white lab coats. Helen Martin's voice over the telephone deep and cultured sharpened that image. Actually the picture was all out of focus with reality. Being a research geologist for the State Department of Conservation is like working with a one-night stand circus. WHEN I CAUGHT up with Miss Martin at Munuscong in the Upper Peninsula on her summer circuit, the lab coat had faded into blue slacks and a plaid shirt.

Tiny and a bit tousle-headed, she looked more addicted to knitting, making hooked rugs and baking apple pies than to geological study. Those are her hobbies, along with raising Samoyed dogs but it's geology that really absorbs her. She arrived at Munuscong on her Michigan tour equipped with camera, camping equipment and lecture material. The latter included geological maps, color slides and a projector. DETECTIVE STORIES for relaxation reading are the ether staple supply In her car.

V-' "iff 'f A HER FLAMING enthusiasm for her field 'showed as she explained the "why" of these courses. "We give the teachers background in conservation, so they can teach it to the children through their regular subjects," she explained. And as a geologist, she preaches that conservation begins not with game, trees and wildflowers, but with the nonrenewable mineral resources of the earth. "All other resources, including man, are dependent on them for life," she declares. That was the text of her afternoon lecture at the camp.

TURN TO PAGE 8 -V -'Aw' iA Fhntos Vinne WitPk Stage props are cut and assembled in Betty's basement workshop. HELEN MARTIN AND PATSY A geologist turns to wildlife study.