Betty was only a toddler when the stock market crashed in 1929. Her father, engaged in the NY markets, lost his clients. She remembers feeling lucky that they were able to stay in their home, but there were no new clothes, only hand-me-downs from her sister or cousins. In 1942 her father was able to get a position with the Department of Agriculture, hugely important at that time, and they moved to Alexandria, VA.
Attending George Washington HS, she worked as a file clerk for the Navy Department the summer she was sixteen. News of the war was limited to the radio and Movie Tone news, but the military presence was the central part of life in the US capitol and its growing suburbs. As a teenager, there was no driving around in cars on weekends because gas was rationed. Near a wartime city, she remembers the East Coast ‘brown outs’ where the shades were closed every night to hide the lights inside.
Another memory is watching from Long Island Sound the German Hindenburg airship, with big red Swastikas painted on it, fly overhead in 1936, and she could see the passengers on the observation deck. She still remembers wondering how the accommodations in that dirigible were arranged and the speculation everywhere as to whether it was on a mission to take pictures of the East Coast shoreline.
Betty graduated from Mary Washington College with a degree in Art. She taught elementary classes for two years in Alexandria. In 1951 she married Herschel Gore. He was a Marine Corps veteran from World War II, serving as a Marine tail-gunner on B-25s during the war in the Pacific. After he graduated from UVA, Betty taught four more years in Charlottesville while he attended medical school. Herschel joined the US Public Health Service with assignments in New York, Greece, and Washington DC. They ended up living in the heart of Fairfax City with their four children.
In 1978 Betty had time for her intense interest in history and art by working as a docent at the Robert E. Lee Boyhood Home in Alexandria. She stayed there for 17 years. In 1981, her schedule added a weekly DC trip to docent at the Hirshhorn Museum. In 1993 she retired as a professional volunteer docent.
Along the way, Betty started water color classes at NOVA. She was active in the McLean Art Club and the Art League of Fairfax. Her travels to art workshops include trips to Italy, Greece, France, Tunisia, Mexico, and many at Springmaid Textile workshops in Myrtle Beach, SC.
Herschel died of cancer in 1989, and in 1993 Betty bought a home near her daughter in Charlottesville. After 14 years there, she moved to an apartment in Oakton VA near her three other children in the area, and six grandchildren.
Betty came to The Woodlands in 2015. Her home is filled with memories: the small Victorian table that meets you at the door is from her grandfather’s antique collection, her grandmother’s gold mirror inside provides one last look before you leave, the brass and copper displays include a mortar and pestle collection, the Marine plaque over one door, and the Public Health Service over another. Most of all, a visitor can enjoy Betty’s own lovely watercolors.
