Biography:Betty Wills

From HandWiki
Betty Wills
Wills in 2025
Born
Elizabeth Devaney

(1949-12-27) December 27, 1949 (age 76)
Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.
Alma materHarvardX (Professional Certificate in Leadership and Communication, 2022)
OccupationProducer, scriptwriter, video photographer, editor, publisher, rancher
Years active1969–present
Works
Television series: Water Sports Weekly, Exotic and Unusual Fishes, Trinity Meadows Raceway
Spouse(s)Connie Dale Wills m. 1979; dd. 2003
ChildrenChristine Wills (1971), Rebecca Wills-Fussell (1981)
Parents
  • Robert O. Devaney (1921-2016) (father)
  • Christine Petteruti Devaney (1924) (mother)
RelativesChristine Chartier (sister)
Awardsmultiple - see relevant Awards section.

Betty Wills is an American nonprofit executive, encyclopedist, and former television producer. She is the founder of the Justapedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) educational charity that provides the platform for Justapedia, an online open-source encyclopedia. Earlier in her career, Wills worked as a producer, scriptwriter, CNN Headline News field producer, videographer, post-production editor, and conservationist, creating nationally broadcast series as an outdoor journalist who focused on documentary filmmaking, nature programming, and equestrian sport. Her productions featured well-known hosts and celebrity narrators, and included the weekly Trinity Meadows Raceway series on Gaylord’s KTVT Superstation, which promoted Texas horse racing during the state’s parimutuel legalization campaign. She is also an accomplished cutting horse competitor.

Her programs, including Water Sports Weekly, A Celebration of Horses: The American Saddlebred, and Exotic and Unusual Fishes of North America, reached national and international audiences and earned honors such as the American Horse Shows Association award for Broadcast Media Excellence. A Celebration of Horses was filmed as a behind-the-scenes portrait of William Shatner at his Belle Reve Farm in Kentucky, highlighting his role as both breeder and exhibitor. Wills also founded the Earthwave Society, a conservation nonprofit that partnered with universities, as well as state and federal resource agencies across North America. In equestrian sport, she competed in cutting horse events and won the 1985 NCHA Non-Pro National Championship at a time when women riders were underrepresented in competition. Through these varied contributions, Wills built a career spanning equestrian sport, outdoor media, conservation advocacy, and digital publishing, culminating in the creation of Justapedia as an alternative to Wikipedia.

Background

Betty Wills was raised in Houston, Texas, the youngest of three daughters of Christine and Robert Devaney. Her father, at age 66, was elected mayor of Patton Village, Texas on a reform campaign to end the town’s reputation as a speed trap.[1] His determination to end the corruption drew opposition from certain town officials and law enforcement who had been profiting from the fines. The controversy attracted widespread media attention, leading Devaney to seek assistance from State Representative Keith Valigura of Conroe and the Texas State legislature, which ultimately supported his efforts through new legislation.[2]

After her divorce in 1978, Wills focused on building her magazine and showing Quarter Horses. During her travels interviewing notable Quarter Horse breeders and exhibitors such as Terry Bradshaw, she met her future husband Connie Dale Wills, who had just purchased Charlie Polite, a recently retired AQHA race horse stallion.[3][4]

Connie Wills was one of the five founders of the Texas Quarter Horse Association (TQHA) along with Sam Bond, Jerry Reudasil, Joe Turner and Jim Beavers. The TQHA was initially established to help promote parimutuel racing in Texas, which eventually came to be as a result of the concerted efforts of race horse enthusiasts. Within three months of meeting, Connie and Betty Wills married, and she relocated to Fort Worth, Texas.[4][5][6][7]

Education

Wills graduated from Jessie H. Jones High School in Houston, and later attended Harvard classes and qualified for her Professional Certificates in Leadership and Communication, issued April 2022, along with other verified certificates for Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasive Writing and Public Speaking (issued November 19, 2021), and Exercising Leadership: Foundational Principles (issued April 13, 2022).[8]

Career

After retiring from television production and conservation work, Wills transitioned into online publishing as a volunteer editor on Wikipedia, where she edited under the username "Atsme." Beginning in 2011, she wrote and expanded articles on topics ranging from conservation and fisheries to equestrian sport, and contributed to several pieces that achieved Good Article and Featured Article status. Her experiences exposed both the strengths and weaknesses of the platform, including issues of editorial bias, conflict-of-interest disputes, and the gender gap among contributors. These insights shaped her later decision to create an alternative reference project that emphasized objectivity, accountability, and editorial balance.

Justapedia

In 2023, Wills established the Justapedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit headquartered in North Texas, to provide an independent platform for the online encyclopedia Justapedia. The project was created to offer an alternative to Wikipedia by forking its articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license, allowing editors to address and remove systemic bias. Unlike a static mirror, Justapedia operates with its own governance, editorial standards, and community, while preserving full revision histories.

During an October 17, 2023 interview with comedian Russell Brand, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger underscored the project’s mission:

We’re complaining about the bias of Wikipedia articles, right? Well, we can fix that. We can rewrite the Wikipedia articles. There is, in fact, a well-managed organization – it’s not a big organization, it’s a big project … it’s a major new project called Justapedia, as in, it’s just an encyclopedia, and they have forked Wikipedia, and just put the articles up there for you to edit and make your own versions of.

Larry Sanger, [9]

Under Wills’ leadership, with input from a strong, like-minded Board of Directors, the encyclopedia has grown into an international project with millions of views, and millions of articles structured to preserve objective, factual history in a free educational resource.

Before establishing Justapedia, Wills spent more than three decades in broadcasting and publishing, where she worked as a television creator-producer, scriptwriter, video photographer, and post-production editor during an era when women behind the scenes in film and television were underrepresented.[10]

Television production

From the late 1980s through the mid-2000s, Wills worked as a television creator-producer, scriptwriter, videographer, and post-production editor. At a time when women were underrepresented behind the camera, she developed, scripted, and produced hundreds of features for commercial, cable, and PBS broadcast.[11]

Her first national cable series, Water Sports Weekly (1990–1992), ran year-round on Prime Network, NESN, Home Sports Entertainment, Sunshine Network, and other regional sports channels.[12][13][14]

In 1991, Wills created and produced Trinity Meadows Raceway (tv series), a weekly television series broadcast on KTVT’s Gaylord Superstation, which reached an estimated 17–20 states and more than 10 million households across the central and southern United States.[15] Airing Saturday mornings at 10 a.m., the program combined handicapping analysis by track announcer Roger Heitzman and a Dallas Morning News handicapper with on-site interviews conducted by presenter Steve Uzell, along with feature segments on trainers, jockeys, stallions, and notable races.[16] Wills managed nearly every production role herself—including scriptwriting, videography, editing, and producing—and oversaw a Friday workflow in which handicapping segments were videotaped on BetacamSP and integrated with pre-produced features before delivery to Channel 11 for broadcast the following morning.[17] She occasionally appeared on camera, including in a segment urging voters to support pari-mutuel racing in Texas.[18]

Trinity Meadows Racetrack had been established by Jimmy Bradley and partners following the 1987 legalization of pari-mutuel betting in Texas.[19][20] Operating under a Class 2 license, the venue became the Dallas–Fort Worth area’s principal track until a Class 1 facility was approved.[21] Its bid for the state’s first Class 1 license was ultimately denied in favor of Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie, but Trinity Meadows nonetheless played a transitional role in reviving Texas racing after decades of prohibition.[22] Wills’ television series chronicled this moment in state racing history, blending journalism with promotional advocacy at a time when independent tracks faced mounting competition from state-backed venues.[23]

In 1993, Wills created the PBS program A Celebration of Horses: The American Saddlebred, recorded at William Shatner’s Belle Reve Farm in Kentucky. The program won the American Horse Shows Association 1993 award for Broadcast Media Excellence.[24]

Wills followed with Exotic and Unusual Fishes of North America, a three-episode PBS miniseries broadcast from 1993 to 1996, later distributed internationally.[25][26][27][28] The alligator gar episode became the highest-rated PBS program of the evening during July 1992 sweeps and again in January 1995.[29]

Her programs featured narration or appearances by celebrities such as William Shatner, Bill Murray, Larry Hagman, Jimmy Dean, James Drury, and Alex Cord.

2000 Gold Telly Award for America's Crayfish: Crawling in Troubled Waters, Betty Wills, producer for Earthwave Productions, Nature/Wildlife category.[30]

Awards

Throughout her career, Wills’ work in television production, outdoor journalism, and conservation filmmaking received multiple honors from professional organizations and television industry festivals. Her documentaries and series earned recognition for broadcast excellence, environmental education, and innovative storytelling, with awards spanning from regional broadcast competitions to international festivals.[31]

  • 1990 Crystal Award (for Water Sports Weekly episode, Bimini Big Game Fishing in the Bahamas
  • 1993 AHSA Broadcast Media Excellence Award (A Celebration of Horses: The American Saddlebred)
  • 1996 Outdoor Writers Association of America Award for River Invaders: The Scourge of Zebra Mussels
  • 1998 North American Film & Video Awards 2nd placd for A Vanishing Melody: The Call of the Piping Plover
  • 2000 Carnegie Wild Life Film Festival Honorable Mention for America's Crayfish: Crawling In Troubled Waters
  • 2000 Booklist Editor’s Choice Award for America’s Crayfish: Crawling In Troubled Waters
  • 2000 Golden Telly Award for America's Crayfish: Crawling In Troubled Waters
  • 2000 Texas Outdoor Writers Association Excellence In Craft Award for Sturgeon of the Mississippi Drainage
  • 2002 Texas Outdoor Writers Association Excellence In Craft Award for One Good Tern Deserves Another

Conservation advocacy

In 1992, Wills founded the nonprofit Earthwave Society, an organization of volunteers “dedicated to conservation through information and education.”[29] Earthwave coordinated with state and federal resource agencies, universities, and research units including Cornell University, UC Davis, Ohio State University, and Virginia Tech College of Natural Resources and Environment.[32][33][34]

Equestrian career

Wills began riding horses as a youth in Houston. As a teenager, she galloped Thoroughbreds for Red Barn Farms at a time when women were not permitted to hold jockey licenses in the United States, limiting them to training roles despite competitive aspirations in races such as the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing. She later developed an interest in cutting horse competition, a male-dominated discipline within the National Cutting Horse Association.[5]

Competing as a non-pro rider, Wills placed fourth in the 1984 NCHA Non-Pro Ltd World Championships[35] and won the 1985 NCHA Non-Pro National Championship.[36] She also served as a certified NCHA judge.[5]

Scuba and photography

As a professional photographer and advanced open water scuba instructor and Nitrox instructor (emeritus), she has captured images that have been featured as Wikipedia:Picture of the day,[37][38] and Commons:Picture of the Year finalists.[39][40] Her work was also featured in Bokeh Magazine.[41]

Ranching and cutting horse competition

Betty Wills and her late husband, Connie D. Wills, owned the Wills Ranch in Parker County, Texas (formerly known as the Circle W Ranch) where they kept a small herd of Angus show cattle, and bred, raised, and trained top quality American Quarter Horses for AQHA halter and performance events, and National Cutting Horse Association events. Accomplished in multiple disciplines, she favored riding and showing cutting horses, became an NCHA Judge, and was a successful competitor in NCHA cutting horse competitions at a time when few females were competing. She earned the title of 1985 NCHA National Non-Pro Champion after winning the National Area Work-off championship in Jackson, MS. in 1986.[36][42] She also won numerous circuit awards, and was a 1984 NCHA Lmtd Non-Pro Top Ten World Champion.[43]

References

  1. ↑ Shlachter, Barry (November 7, 1988). "Patton Village is a migraine". Fort Worth Star-Telegram. p. 18. 
  2. ↑ Schlachter, Barry (July 5, 1989). "Speed trap ban forces police chief to a fast route". Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 
  3. ↑ Simmons, Diane Ciarloni (February 1980). "Quarter Horse World". pp. 8-11. https://www.thewillsranch.com/ranch-history-1. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Eastern Western Quarter Horse Journal". December 1981. pp. 54-58. https://www.thewillsranch.com/ranch-history-1. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "Meet Betty Wills in Fort Worth". 2018-03-07. https://voyagedallas.com/interview/meet-betty-wills-betty-wills-fort-worth/. 
  6. ↑ Winslow, Susan (2018-10-29). "EC Profile: Madison Musser". https://www.equinechronicle.com/ec-profile-madison-musser/. 
  7. ↑ "Writer, Television Producer, Documentary Filmmaker, Photographer & Equestrian". 2020-10-14. https://shoutoutdfw.com/meet-betty-wills-writer-television-producer-documentary-filmmaker-photographer-equestrian/. 
  8. ↑ "Biography". 1970-01-01. https://www.bettywills.com/bio. 
  9. ↑ "Larry Sanger Interview with Russell Brand". October 17, 2023. https://x.com/rustyrockets/status/1714309768087564622. 
  10. ↑ Lauzen, Martha M.; Dozier, David M. (1999). "The Role of Women on Screen and behind the Scenes in the Television and Film Industries: Review of a Program of Research". Journal of Communication Inquiry (SAGE Publications) 23 (4): 355–373. doi:10.1177/0196859999023004004. ISSN 0196-8599. 
  11. ↑ Lauzen, Martha M.; Dozier, David M. (1999). "The Role of Women on Screen and behind the Scenes in the Television and Film Industries". Journal of Communication Inquiry (SAGE Publications) 23 (4): 355–373. doi:10.1177/0196859999023004004. 
  12. ↑ "Scoreboard, Sec 3, pg 6". Fort Worth Star Telegram. 1990-02-14. https://www.newspapers.com/image/641885843/?terms=Water%20Sports%20Weekly&match=1. 
  13. ↑ "The Signal". Santa Clarita, CA: p. 60. 1990-06-24. https://www.newspapers.com/image/333660667/?terms=Water%20Sports%20Weekly&match=1. 
  14. ↑ "Bangor Daily News, TV Guide". 1991-09-28. p. 105. https://www.newspapers.com/image/664273922/?terms=Water%20Sports%20Weekly&match=1. 
  15. ↑ Hagerty, James (May 18, 1991). "Trinity Meadows to air weekly preview show". The Dallas Morning News: p. 23. 
  16. ↑ Evans, Robert (June 1, 1991). "Handicappers join Trinity Meadows television lineup". The Dallas Morning News: p. 19. 
  17. ↑ Williams, Mark (August 10, 1991). "Racing revival boosts Trinity Meadows broadcast". Fort Worth Star-Telegram: p. E1. 
  18. ↑ Branch, John (July 20, 1991). "Betting measure gains support in racing broadcast". Fort Worth Star-Telegram: p. C4. 
  19. ↑ Blumenthal, Ralph (November 5, 1987). "Texans Approve Horse and Dog Racing". The New York Times: p. A22. 
  20. ↑ "Racetracks Lament". Dallas Observer. October 12, 1995. 
  21. ↑ "New Track Threatens Old Dreams". Fort Worth Star-Telegram. August 6, 1996. 
  22. ↑ "Mystery and Legend: Trinity Meadows still alive and waiting". Weatherford Democrat. September 4, 2008. 
  23. ↑ Williams, Mark (August 10, 1991). "Racing revival boosts Trinity Meadows broadcast". Fort Worth Star-Telegram: p. E1. 
  24. ↑ "TV Series Featuring Saddlebreds Honored". The American Saddlebred (American Saddlebred Horse Association): 88. January 1994. 
  25. ↑ "Alligator Gar: Predator or Prey?". Manhattan Mercury: p. 11. 1995-09-15. http://www.newspapers.com/image/425264808/?terms=Alligator%20Gar%3A%20Predator%20or%20Prey&match=1. 
  26. ↑ "TV Times". The Vancouver Sun: p. 18. 1995-07-21. http://www.newspapers.com/image/495937286/. 
  27. ↑ "Cable Conversion Grid". Times Colonist: p. 71. 1995-07-21. http://www.newspapers.com/image/508212544/?terms=Alligator%20Gar%3A%20Predator%20or%20Prey&match=1. 
  28. ↑ "TV Guide". Palm Beach Post: p. 75. 1996-01-07. http://www.newspapers.com/image/134699923/?terms=Alligator%20Gar%3A%20Predator%20or%20Prey%3F&match=1. 
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 "Earthwave Society". https://www.earthwave.org/. 
  30. ↑ "Gold Telly for America's Crayfish:Crawling In Troubled Waters". 1970-01-01. https://www.bettywills.com/awards. 
  31. ↑ "1990 Dallas Crystal Awards". 2016. https://www.bettywills.com/awards. 
  32. ↑ "New York Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit". https://dnr.cals.cornell.edu/extension-outreach/new-york-cooperative-fish-and-wildlife-research-unit/. 
  33. ↑ Ahmadi, Abbas (2020-10-07). "Serge I. Doroshov". https://animalscience.ucdavis.edu/about/alumni-and-friends/memorial-book/doroshov-serge. 
  34. ↑ "Adjunct & Emeritus Faculty". 2019-08-13. https://fishwild.vt.edu/content/fishwild_vt_edu/en/about/adjunct_emeritus.html. 
  35. ↑ "NATIONAL CUTTING HORSE ASSOCIATION • 2020 HISTORICAL RECORDS * World Champions". https://nchacutting.com/docs/default-source/default-document-library/ncha_2020_yearbook.pdf?sfvrsn=22f9620b_4. 
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 Anderson, Cathy (April 11, 1986). "Mr San Dancer Claims Area Work–Off". Quarter Horse News. 
  37. ↑ "Template:POTD/2020-04-09". 2020-04-09. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:POTD/2020-04-09. 
  38. ↑ "Template:POTD/2017-09-22". 2017-09-22. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:POTD/2017-09-22. 
  39. ↑ "Commons:Picture of the Year/2015/R2/Results/All". 2014-08-16. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2015/R2/Results/All. 
  40. ↑ "Commons:Picture of the Year/2016/Results/All" (in la). 2016-04-30. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2016/Results/All. 
  41. ↑ "Bokeh Mag Vol 37 is Now Available for Download in your Bokeh Apple Newsstand App.". 2015-12-01. https://bokehonline.com/blog/bokeh-mag-vol-37-is-now-available-for-download-in-your-bokeh-apple-newsstand-app/. 
  42. ↑ Auer, Tonie (May 4, 2001). "Cutting thrills, Betty Wills, CEOs, celebrities, cowboys". Fort Worth Business Press. 
  43. ↑ "NCHA 2020 Yearbook". https://nchacutting.com/docs/default-source/default-document-library/ncha_2020_yearbook.pdf. 




Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Biography:Betty_Wills&oldid=4186609"