My beloved Aunt Bettie, my dear godmother, I will miss her so much!

Elizabeth (Bettie) Wilker Curry
5/8/1920-1/30/2018

Following a brief time in hospice following an unexpected diagnosis of metastatic cancer of Müllerian origin, my grandmother and Curry matriarch Bettie Curry died age 97 with her family at her bedside. She was born Elizabeth Lenore Wilker in Cleveland, Ohio to Friedrich and Viola (Hundertmark) Wilker, the youngest of three children. She grew up the first solely English-speaking generation in her family of German immigrants.

She graduated in 1939 from the Vogue School of Fashion Art in Chicago (present-day Illinois Institute of Art-Chicago) and became a highly skilled dressmaker. She married Robert (Bob) Norris Curry on January 3, 1941 and settled in Chili, a suburb of Rochester, NY in 1952, where she was a founding member of the preschool program at the Lutheran Church of Our Saviour. She was a fixture in the life of Gates-Chili, NY for over six decades of service to her community, teaching night school classes in sewing and tailoring at Gates Chili High School, and serving in leadership positions in the service of her church.

She was widowed on May 24, 1986 after 45 years of marriage to Bob Curry, the love of her life, and never remarried over the next 32 years as the dowager empress of the Curry extended family. She ran a dressmaking business out of her home on Westside Drive for many years, renowned for the ability to create a dress based only on a magazine picture and vague notions from brides and prom queen aspirants. She was an adventurous, outgoing woman whose bridge game was second to none; she was never afraid to try something new or make a new friend, life skills that came in handy as her extreme longevity caused her to outlive so many whom she loved.

As our snow-haired matriarch, she maintained her legendary independence until the age of 95, when she finally gave up driving and moved to The Villages in Greece. Over the last week caring for her in hospice, I got to meet several close friends she made just over the last two years, all remarking on how delightfully friendly, wise, and easygoing my grandmother was. She was a fashion-forward entrepreneuse, and an alto-singing, pie-baking, butterfly-loving, garden-growing mom, grandma, and great-grandma. She was the only person I’ve known who could make a Poinsettia not only live over multiple seasons but also long-night it until it turned red again. Her pie crusts were the stuff of legend, as was her diplomatic way of telling people that a given idea stank (“Is that wise?”). She was a lifelong Republican who voted for Wendell Willkie over FDR but who maintained such great personal and political integrity that she cast a ballot for Hillary last year. She was a Lutheran Sunday school matron who neither shrunk nor died of shock when I came out to her when she was in her late 70s, and her attendance at my wedding in 2013 was one of the high points of her life. She remarked to me last week that “life only begins at 60, just you wait and see,” and I cannot think of anyone who lived a fuller, more joyous or gracious life than she. vogue prom dresses

Bettie Curry put the Grand in Grandma, and I will miss her. I am sad to lose her before the century mark but glad that her end was quick, painless, and surrounded by those she loved. She was a Christian who preached only in deeds, rarely words, that love of neighbor was most to be prized among virtues. The world is a much smaller, less noble place without her. Rest in peace, Grandma. You will be missed and cherished forever no matter how long that promised light perpetual may shine.