BETTY FRANKLIN

Mary Elizabeth (Betty) Franklin of Sarasota, Florida, and West Tisbury, Massachusetts, died on Wednesday, October 22nd. She was 86 and had lived an active, abundant life, loved by her family and her many friends. She was a generous and creative spirit, blessed with great warmth, endless curiosity, and gentle good humor. Her smile lit up a thousand rooms.

A resident of Larchmont from 1962 to 1980, Betty was born Mary Elizabeth Evans in Shiloh, New Jersey, in 1922. She grew up in Madison, New Jersey, and after graduating from Bucknell University in 1944, she moved to New York City, where she worked as an editorial assistant at Life magazine. It was in New York that Betty met her husband, Ralph C. Franklin, who was studying at Columbia University after returning from service with the Marine Corps in World War II. They married in Singapore in 1948, and began several years of living overseas - in the Philippines, where Betty worked as a teacher at the American School, and then in Brazil, where her two older sons, Bruce and Andrew, were born - before returning to the States in 1954, moving to Ralph's hometown of Cincinnati, where her son John and her daughter, Nancy, were born.

The family moved to Larchmont in 1962, when Ralph went to work for MCA TV in New York. While raising her four children (and dog Poppy), Betty was active in the public school system - in the P.T.A. at Murray Avenue School, which her children attended, and as a volunteer in the Teacher Mom program. When Mamaroneck High School started its College Information Center, in the early seventies, she was one of its first volunteer staff members. She also worked part-time in two local shops, Coldstream Antiques, on the Post Road, and in her friend Irene Wielgus's store Needleworks, on Chatsworth Avenue. She played in a Friday-morning bowling league for many years, and enjoyed taking oil-painting classes from the artist Alton S. Tobey, who lived across the street from the Franklins.

After Ralph retired in 1980, Betty and Ralph spent more time on Martha's Vineyard, a place that had played a big part in Betty's life since her family began going to the island in the early sixties. There, Betty's many interests flourished, including art, music, golf, gardening, bird-watching, antiques, and, above all, books. She loved to read and was a driving force behind the annual book sale that benefited the West Tisbury Public Library.

Ralph, her husband of sixty years, survives her, as do her sons Bruce, president of the ADP Group in Sarasota, Florida; Andrew, of Old Greenwich, Connecticut, a writer and producer for NBC News; John, an artist, of Princeton, New Jersey; and her daughter, Nancy, a writer for The New Yorker magazine. She is also survived by her four beloved grandchildren, Emily, Sam, Eiko, and Yoko; a nephew and two nieces; and her brother, John H. Evans, of Vero Beach, Florida.

Betty had a gift for making friends, and the many friends she leaves behind will never forget her.

Memorial contributions may be made in her name to the West Tisbury Public Library Gift Fund, 1042 State Road, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568.