Elizabeth "Betsy" Nye Holmes
Birth: 1919
Hartsgrove
Ashtabula County
Ohio, USA
Death: Mar. 9, 2015
Mill Valley
Marin County
California, USA
MILL VALLEY, Calif. — Elizabeth “Betsy” Nye Holmes died on Monday, March 9, 2015, in Mill Valley, Calif.
Betsy was born in Hartsgrove, Ohio, in 1919, and raised on her family farm as the middle child of five children. While she was the only one among the siblings to settle outside of Ohio, the farm remained a part of her always and she passed on her love of it to her children and grandchildren, who visit it to this day.
Thanks to the support of her brothers working the farm and her sisters leaving college early to start teaching, Betsy spent 4 years at Hiram College, graduating in 1941. Following college, she taught middle school in rural Ohio for two years before going to Washington to be the first woman to occupy a chair in Government Intelligence at the State Department and Pentagon during the war. Sometime in there she winked at Lawrence Holmes, then a naval engineer, from across the commissary hall; they married and in 1950 and moved to Cambridge, Mass., where she assisted in historical research at MIT and he got a degree in architecture.
In 1956, they moved to San Francisco, Calif., where she raised her children, ran a lecture series at SF State College and joined the students on the picket line there during the strike. She moved to the middle ridge of Mt. Tamalpais in Mill Valley in 1968, where she lived with her children and Larry, until his death, and then later Chuck Weesner until his death. Betsy moved to the Redwoods in Mill Valley in 2006.
Betsy participated in peace marches from the 60’s in San Francisco to the corner of Camino Alto. Fiercely intelligent, beautiful and charming - with a weirdly accurate intuition - she was a voracious reader and strong friend who was loved and will be missed by many, including her brother, Perry; her children, Sally and Ben; and their partners and children, Doug, Wendy, Eliza, Perry and Zulma.
Posted: Sunday, March 15, 2015 9:00 am - Star Beacon
Family links:
Parents:
Robert Eugene Nye (1875 - 1934)
Clara Maria Kampf Nye (1884 - 1964)
Siblings:
Cynthia Nye Marsh (1915 - 2011)*
Mary Alice Nye Fuller (1916 - 2011)*
Elizabeth Nye Holmes (1919 - 2015)
William Robert Nye (1924 - 2002)*
*Calculated relationship
Burial:
Cremated, Ashes scattered.
Created by: Kelton Slane
Record added: Mar 27, 2015
Find A Grave Memorial# 144245764
