Memorial Minute
for Betty Ray
1 December 1925 - 13 June 2009
Submitted by Dennis Barret for the Death and Memorials committee
July 11, 2010
Bettie Ray was the fourth child born to Herbert and Mary Ware, on a farm in Woodstown in Southern New Jersey. With her sister Lulu and brothers Claude and Preston, she enjoyed a happy childhood in the farming community, engaging in all manner of farm work and athletics, under the tutelage of her considerably older brothers. She rode her horse out to pasture to bring the cows in for milking, and she drove the wagon for hay-baling. "I was a bit of a holy terror as a child," she said in relating her Spiritual Journey, "but I've grown out of that."
She attended a one-room schoolhouse, with a single teacher for grades K though 8, and graduated at the top of her class - of three. At Meeting, she attended first-day school and played in the first-day school orchestra.
Although her mother took her own life when Bettie was 11, the effect was somewhat blunted by Bettie's having spent so much time outdoors, and so little indoors with her mother. Her father soon remarried, and Bettie recognized Bess as her "second mother," rather than as a stepmother.
In high school she excelled in sports and wrote for the yearbook. In college, at New Jersey College for Women (now a part of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey) she confessed to having spent the first two years "majoring in extracurricular activities, and the second two years making up for the first two years."
Nevertheless she earned a B.A. in 1946 with a major in German, and went on to her first job, teaching a fifth-grade class. A very brief (two-month) exposure to elementary teaching sufficed to persuade Bettie that her talents lay elsewhere, and she studied at Wellesley for a Master's degree in Hygiene and Physical Education. The latter prepared her for higher-level teaching -- three years at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, six years at Drew University in New Jersey.
In the summer before her last year of college, on the beach at Cape May, Bettie had met Jim Ray, a lanky MIT engineer. For 13 years they carried on a sporadic correspondence as Jim travelled around the country with various jobs; and then they married, under the care of Woodstown Quaker Meeting.
In the ensuing 15 years Jim worked for Lockheed in Sunnyvale, CA, and the couple enjoyed the best of Northern California living, played a lot of tennis, and welcomed sons Aaron in 1959 and Christopher in 1961.
In 1974, when Jim found employment with Hughes Aircraft, the family of four moved to Denver. More tennis, and the difficult years of raising teen-age boys. Shortly after moving to Denver, Jim answered the door to confront a pair of Mormon missionaries.When Jim replied to their query that he was more interested in Quakerism, the Mormons directed him to Mountain View Meeting, and so the Rays returned to Bettie's Quaker roots.
She found Western Quaker practice a good deal different from that of her youth. After her first meeting in Denver she declared to Jim, "That's not a Quaker Meeting, that's a group therapy session." But she softened, and soon served on the Finance Committee, the Meeting House Committee and many others, and eventually as clerk of the Meeting.
By 1979 Bettie's arthritis was diagnosed, and she suffered increasing lameness in later years, with eventual surgeries for three joint replacements.
In Denver, Bettie worked as a bookkeeper for The Gramophone Shop until 1989, a year after Jim retired. In 1993 Jim began what Bettie described as his "descent into Alzheimer hell," while Bettie stood faithfully by and cared for him, until his death in 1999.
In later years, Bettie continued cheering for all Denver teams. She kept up a lively correspondence on email, visited anyone in the Meeting who was sick, played bridge, cooked excellent meals for friends, kept up with movies, constantly read books from the public library, quilted, and did all manner of needlework, never letting arthritis stop her. She attended Meeting for Worship weekly, (choosing the quieter early meeting), and business meeting every month, (unless the Denver Broncos were playing a crucial game), and generally IMYM in the summer. She introduced herself to at least one new attender with "I am Bettie Ray, the Meeting curmudgeon." Nonetheless, she was regarded as a special friend by many of the youth of the Meeting.
Sudden illness in the weeks before IMYM forced Bettie to abandon her plans to attend. A group of 30 friends gathered on Saturday at IMYM in an impromptu "meeting for healing" to hold Bettie in the Light. Alas it was too late, she had died early that morning.
She is survived by sons Aaron and Chris, daughter-in-law Julie, grandsons James and Peter, many nieces and nephews, and a host of Colorado Friends and friends who are still stunned by the physical absence from their lives of such an important force, such a beloved figure.
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