Billie G. Armstrong Fund
TYPE OF FUND: Designated
DATE ESTABLISHED: Initiated: January 30, 2008
PURPOSE: To honor the memory of Billie G. Armstrong by providing funding to the Central WV Center for Pregnancy Care in Tucker County.
DISTRIBUTION: To Central WV Center for Pregnancy Care, Tucker County upon the recommendation of the Grants Committee and approval by the Board of Directors of TCF.
VARIANCE POWER: If, in the judgment of the TCF Board of Directors, the restrictions and conditions of the fund become unnecessary, incapable of fulfillment or inconsistent with the charitable needs of the community, the TCF Board of Directors maintains the right to modify the terms of this fund.
FUNDING: Donations from family members.
BACKGROUND: Billie Glen Armstrong was born in the little village of Auxvasse (Callaway County), Missouri in 1924. His father, Milton Armstrong, died when Billie was just five years old. His mother, Ora Deardoff Armstrong, headed for California to make a living doing what she did best. She cooked, ultimately spending years as the cook for the late June Allyson and her husband, the late Dick Powell.
Young Billie went to Sacramento City Schools through junior high, then to Brown Military Academy in San Diego. He always wanted to fly, and his buddies told him it was easy to become a pilot in the U. S. Air Force, but becoming a Navy Pilot would be a feat. Always up for a challenge, Billie finished junior college, then went off to the U.S. Navy and graduated as a Naval Aviator at the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi, Texas.
In 1946, Billie found himself at Langley Field in Virginia where he was smitten by a lovely young West Virginia girl named Gloria Nestor, from St. George. After his discharge that same year, he went back to California. He and Gloria were married there on August 25, 1946. They lived in Compton, California, where Billie graduated as a flight instructor at Cal-Brown School of Aeronautics. Soon after though, he had surgery for colon cancer, and upon recovery began to work in the business of construction. Ten years later, a recurrence of the cancer required more surgery. Because of his health history, Bill and Gloria did not have any children. They always had dogs, and for the rest of their lives they dedicated much time and money adopting dogs and supporting the humane societies.
After spending his working years as a construction administrator, most of those years with the Del E. Webb Corporation, building hotels and casinos in Las Vegas, Hawaii and Atlantic City, they retired to the east coast. In 2001, as health problems worsened, they depended on Gloria’s niece and her husband, Priscilla and Jim Flanagan to care for them off and on, eventually living with them after Gloria went to the nursing home in August 2006. It was during this time that Billie allowed himself to think about children and the millions of babies who would now be in their 20’s and 30’s who had been sacrificed in the womb for various reasons. He was so incensed over something that he had ignored up to this time that he gathered up all his silver coins and his grandfather’s pocket watch and instructed that the money from those be donated to the Pregnancy Care Center.
It is with that knowledge that we wish to honor “Uncle Billie” by initiating the fund for the Pregnancy Care Center so that others with similar concerns may have a way of donating; assuring the Center in Tucker County has the money to work with as they help women and their babies.