Betsy Kerr, 68, a horseback rider, artist and the longtime wife of Johnny “Red” Kerr, the first coach of the Chicago Bulls, died of heart failure Friday, Oct. 13, in Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood. The Riverside resident grew up in the west-suburban area where she spent a childhood filled with football games, hunting trips with her father, and horseback-riding jaunts from her family’s backyard stable to school and to run errands in town, her husband said. She graduated from Riverside-Brookfield High School in 1949 and received an art degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign four years later. After a short stint in the advertising layout department of the Chicago Daily News, the former Betsy Nemecek married Johnny Kerr in 1954, just as he was beginning his professional basketball career. They lived in a number of places, depending on her husband’s playing and coaching assignments, and Mrs. Kerr remained at home to bring up their family. The tomboy streak in her youth stood her in good stead as she raised four boys (her husband said she could hurl a slipper with the same precision she once used with footballs) and a daughter. The artist in her remained as well. “I have many, many pictures that she’s painted in the house,” her husband said. In addition to her husband, Mrs. Kerr is survived by four sons, Edward, Matthew, William and James; a daughter, Essie J. Harrington; two nieces for whom she was a guardian, Alta Jo Draut and Drusilla Deering; and 10 grandchildren. Visitation will be from 3 until 9 p.m. Wednesday in Chapel Hill Gardens West Funeral Home, 17W201 Roosevelt Rd., Oakbrook Terrace. A funeral service will begin at 11 a.m. Thursday in the funeral home.
