The following, submitted February 2004, is from Sherry Betterton Walker (now Sherry Betterton Carrell in 2024), grand daughter of the artist. Her source is her mother, Eloise Vavra Betterton, daughter of the artist, and records of the Denver Public Library Art and Music Department.

Frank J Vavra was born March 19, 1892, in St. Paul, Nebraska. When he was about seven years of age, his parents moved to Wyoming and settled there permanently. Frank, the oldest of three boys and two girls, spent his childhood and adolescent days in the vigorous and somewhat boisterous atmosphere of Cheyenne,Wyoming. The impressions he was to carry away from that pioneer town, Wyoming's crossroads center since the earliest Indian days, were oft...