![]() ![]() She was a notoriously lax housekeeper, and considered cooking an inconvenience, but she was an excellent sailor, fisherman, gardener, and letter writer. A visiting young friend calling to his mother who’d arrived to pick him up after an overnight: “Mom, Mom! You have to come inside this house! Everything is from the dump!” Sitting in her garden with one of her grandchildren, watching planes flying high in the sky, she commented she “wished someone would throw us down a ginger ale.” When confronted with a problem, her advice was often, “Let it lay where Jesus flung it!” Her default setting was social: “The ice can’t twinkle too soon!” She loved clamming in the island’s ponds, spending time with her dogs, and came to know every inch of the Eddy Farm. Every trip to the old Chilmark dump was a treasure hunt. ![]() ![]() There are so many Betty Eddy stories and witticisms. Her sense of the ridiculous was contagious. She made everyone she met feel special, and wanted to know everything about them. She was a first-class raconteur, and an even better listener. Her introductions and closing stories became legend. They enjoyed an active life together until Bill’s death in 2011.īet was intimately involved with the Women’s Symposium, an annual spring and fall gathering of more than 300 Island women. She persuaded Bill to move full-time to Chilmark, where he was soon hauling recycling to the dump in his pickup truck, picnicking in Menemsha, and adjusting to the Island rhythm. Bill thought he could get Betty to spend winters off-Island, but she would have none of it. Eight years later, Bet married her lifelong friend, Bill Lidgerwood, whom she’d known since 1939. In 1994, Bet and Bud moved to the Vineyard year-round, and settled into their rambling cottage overlooking Chilmark Pond and the Atlantic. Her letters recounting these madcap years were collected in her 2012 book, “Letters from the Attic: Beloved Bedlam of Raising a Family in the 1950s.” At home she was an expert at sewing up hurt chickens. Bet was a nurse’s aide at the New Britain General Hospital, eventually joining its board. After the war they moved to Kensington, Conn., where they lived for many years, raising their four children and an ever-growing number of dogs and cats, a crow, a pair of ducks, and Alice the alligator. In 1945 she married Bud Eddy from Newington, Conn. She attended the Dalton School and Masters School before embarking on a life in Manhattan in the midst of World War II. She vividly recalled the bright September day in 1938, watching in awe as the bay flattened and emptied out, hours before the Great Hurricane made landfall. Her love of sailing and all things watery grew out of summers in Bellport, NY. She was unfamiliar with the Vineyard, and had never heard of Chilmark: “It was the end of the world! And I loved it!”īetty (Elizabeth Austin King) was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1920, and spent her childhood in New Jersey and New York City. She loved Martha’s Vineyard as much as any place on Earth.īetty was introduced to the Vineyard by her husband, Welles (“Bud”) Eddy, in 1958. She passed on as she lived, surrounded by her family and animals. Betty Eddy, a longtime resident of Chilmark, died at her home on the Eddy Farm, Tuesday, June 30, at the age of 100 years and eight days. ![]()
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