Elizabeth "Betty" Brindle was born on December 7, 1924 in Vancouver, Canada, to Ernest and Mary Colquhoun. Betty's parents had both immigrated from Scotland while in their teens, and had met in a mining camp after WWI. The oldest of three children, Betty had two younger brothers, Desmond and Stanley. Betty was fiercely proud of her Scottish heritage.

Betty's early life was marked by hardship. Her father, who had joined the Canadian Army at age 15 to fight in World War One, suffered from tuberculosis as a result of the conditions endured during trench warfare. When Betty was 11, during the height of the Great Depression, the tuberculosis made her father bedridden and he was taken from the home and eventually died in a sanitarium. Betty's mother caught tuberculosis from her husband and was also sent to a sanitarium. Betty's youngest brother Stanley was sent to live with another family and Betty with her brother Desmond, were sent to live in the preventorium, the Canadian version of an orphanage. Betty and her brothers spent the next several years bouncing between foster homes and various other institutions, together and apart, before her mother was finally released, and they were allowed to move back with their mother.

It was the height of the Great Depression. As the family had only a small Canadian Army widow's pension for income, they lost their house and were forced to live in various locations with relatives and less than desirable rentals. At age 15, Betty left school after her freshman year of high school to get a job selling china in a department store while her mother took care of her younger brothers. Betty and her mother vowed to never break up the family again, and Betty always credited her mother with holding the family together during this time.

At the start of WWII, her middle brother joined Canadian Navy and survived the war. Her youngest brother ran away from home, joined the Canadian Army at age 15 and was killed in action in Holland a few days after his 17th birthday.

Betty worked various clerical jobs in Vancouver before moving to Los Angeles, California in the mid-1950s. While working as a medical secretary she became friends with a nurse who noticed they lived near each other. This friend offered to give her a ride home each night as her brother picked her up after work. Elizabeth finally accepted the ride offer after several unpleasant experiences on public transportation which included a drunk across form her on the bus vomiting followed the next night by another man exposing himself. The friend's brother, John Brindle, was a World War II vet and confirmed bachelor who proposed to her six weeks later. They married in 1959. Despite their somewhat advanced ages for the time, Betty was 35 and her husband was 40 when they married, Betty and John went on to have three sons. John was born in 1960, Matthew in 1964, and Paul in 1966.

John Brindle was a Parole Agent for the California State Department of Correction. He and Betty moved to San Jose, California in 1962 where he and Betty bought a house and raised their three sons. In addition to being a devoted wife and mother, she was beloved by friends of her sons to whom she often acted as a stand-in mother.

After retirement, Betty and John lived in various places until settling in Spring, Texas to be near their oldest son John and his wife Carolyn and their children. Betty's husband John passed away in 2003 after 44 years of marriage. Betty found joy and purpose in continuing to help with grandkids, travelling, and visiting extended families every chance she had, until Betty's health finally started to betray her.

Betty led a full life, overcoming early childhood trauma, to become a kind, loving person whose devotion to God and family never waivered. She passed on the importance of each to her three children, who in turn, have passed these beliefs onto their children. Betty's influence can be seen in the faces of her three sons, and her eight grandchildren, who keep ever present the importance of God and family. In this way, Betty's legacy will continue to live on for generations.