Betty Kelley
1928-2025
Betty Kelley was a quilter, and she stitched her life into her most beautiful creation, sewing together the pieces and parts to make 97 ¾ years of memories. Like her quilts, our memories of Betty will live a long and beautiful life as well.
Elizabeth Marie Schaefer Kelley was born in 1928 in Yonkers, New York. Her father, Hugo, was a prominent pharmacist, educator, and official of the American Pharmaceutical Society. Hugo’s contribution to Betty’s quilt was his positive, can-do attitude. Betty’s mother, born Elizabeth Kish of an old Hungarian family, added a patch for discipline and inspired Betty’s lifelong love of creating beautiful things with her hands. Education was important in the Schaefer household, but so was fun. Betty studied piano, learned valuable homemaking skills, went to YMCA camp in the summer, and was shown that being a positive influence mattered. During World War II, Betty worked on a farm, helping with food production. Together, Hugo and Elizabeth set high expectations for Betty and infused her with the values that shaped her life.
After the war ended, Betty enrolled in Syracuse University. In her first year there, she met the next addition to her quilt, the love of her life, Eugene E. Kelley, a handsome ex-GI and member of the school crew team. They met at a mixer for Syracuse students from Westchester County. Betty studied botany, continuing and expanding her lifelong love of growing things. After both graduated from Syracuse, Betty and Gene married on October 1, 1950, and soon started a family. By 1956, the quilt expanded and they had welcomed Ernie, Phil, and Susan and were happy to add Patty in 1963.
Summers with the Kelleys featured vacations exploring the Eastern US and Canada by car. Betty, Gene, the kids, two dogs, and camping gear would all load up in the station wagon and spend days on the road. The trips included sightseeing, fishing, cooking out, enduring rainy nights, and somehow (almost always) having a great time enjoying the outdoors and experiencing new people and places. True to form, Betty excelled as a homemaker in Pleasantville, NY, where they had moved in 1964, and family dinners together nourished body and soul daily. She was an excellent seamstress, crafting stylish clothes for herself and the kids, and along the way she took up quiltmaking. She was happy that her daughters both continued her love of all things textile.
Bringing up four kids isn’t always easy, and the boys were not always perfect, but Betty’s good sense and parenting were based on respect, honesty, and knowing where to draw the line to keep the family on track. When Patty started elementary school, Betty went back to college, earning a Master’s degree in education and her New York State teaching certificate. For more than 20 years, she made her mark in classrooms, giving her pre-K students and first graders in Brewster, NY, a better start in life. When Gene developed Parkinson’s disease at the age of 50, Betty, as always, rose to the challenge, again showing her caregiving side. After retirement, their love of travel took them to foreign lands, and the South Pacific found a special place in their hearts.
In 1994, the quilt of Betty’s life headed west when she and Gene moved to Santa Barbara to live near Patty and her husband Jim Buckley. Gene’s Parkinson’s made life more difficult over time, but with her support and their positive attitude, they found so much to enjoy in this beautiful place (though they still found time to travel, including trips to Turkey, Tanzania, Mexico, and Thailand). Betty became a leader in the Coastal Quilters Guild, spending two years as president and helping put on their shows and contributing to the group’s many charitable endeavors. She also played a big role in the Parkinson Association of Santa Barbara, a group that gave so much help to the couple.
In 2003, Betty and Gene moved to Encina Royale and Betty added more quilt squares by becoming an active and vital part of that community’s life. At Encina, Betty served on the executive board and held officer positions on several committees, including landscaping, a nod to her botanist beginnings. She and Gene created many wonderful friendships at Encina. They also began attending the Live Oak Unitarian Congregation in Goleta, where the Kelleys received a great welcome.
Throughout, she remained a vibrant part of the lives of her four grandchildren, Lindsey, John, Conor, and Katie, passing on the lessons of love, patience, and creativity that she had used to make her own life. As they watched her help Gene and then later deal with her own struggles with aging, she left them all lessons in patience, acceptance, and perseverance. “I’m fine,” she always said no matter what . . . and she usually was.
Betty’s love of word puzzles of all kinds should also be mentioned. For many years, she solved several challenging puzzles every day. Her mind was sharp to the end, and she finished a NY Times Spelling Bee the morning before she passed away. She spent the final year of her life at Maravilla, where she made new friends and received fine care.
With her last stitches made, Betty knew that her family remained the most important parts of her life’s quilt.
Betty was predeceased by her brother, George Schaefer, and by Gene in 2014. She is survived by Ernie and his wife Andrea Asch and their children Lindsey and John; Phil and his wife Lynda Hillman; Susan and her husband Larry Fasnacht; Patty and her husband Jim Buckley and their children Conor and Katie. Donations in Betty’s name would be welcomed at Direct Relief International and/or Parkinson Association of Santa Barbara.
