BETTY PARSONS DOOLEY:
A Remembrance

For those of you unable to join the celebration of Betty’s life on January 14th, here is the eulogy presented at St. Alban’s in Washington by WREI’s president:

I am not normally a hat-wearing woman. But Betty Dooley deemed it important to dress properly for every occasion. She wore a hat to my wedding 25 years ago and I’m returning the compliment.

Betty came by her dress code, her perfect manners, her southern charm, and her love of laughter through a long line of strong Texas women. Her deep and abiding faith, she developed on her own.

This won’t be a formal eulogy. I want to have a conversation with you about Betty Dooley. I’m going to share some stories that show why she is a one-of-a-kind woman who changed our lives and perhaps changed history.

First of all there was Texas. She may have transplanted herself to the East Coast, but Betty’s roots were a tight tether to all parts of the Lone Star State.

When she traveled to the desert in Israel, she exclaimed over how it resembled the flat, dry country around Odessa in west Texas. Odessa is where she came as a young bride, raised her two children, and got her start in politics.

The debate she relished in the halls of Congress and the salons of Washington couldn’t compare to the give-and-take of Shultz’s Beer Garden in Austin, where she successfully lobbied legislators to put a new community college in blue collar Odessa instead of upscale Midland.

Betty was famous for her “Lubbock bar bet.” She’d sidle up to some unsuspecting Yankee on a wintry night in DC. “I’ll bet it’s colder in Texas right now than it is here!”

“You’re on!” would come the response. They’d dial up the weather report for the southern Panhandle, where the winds really do come whipping down the Plains, and sure enough, Lubbock would be ten degrees colder. Voila – a round of free drinks!

This October, Betty fulfilled a life-long dream: she and her friend Betta Ehrenfeld took a three-day rafting trip down the Rio Grande through the vast Big Bend Park on the Mexican border. She came back with tales of floating through prehistoric country of cliffs and silence, sleeping under the stars, and gourmet meals prepared by a strikingly handsome guide.

Then there’s Texarkana, in eastern Texas. That’s where Betty grew up near the family farm on the Red River. A farm whose borders shifted with the spring floods. That’s where her Uncle Lloyd planted a new grove of pecan trees at the age of 73--an act of faith that Betty never forgot. For it takes seven years for pecans to bear fruit. Texarkana is where Betty will go home to be buried with Uncle Lloyd and the rest of her family—that long line of strong Texas women.

Family was another essential ingredient of Betty’s character. From her parents, she inherited a fearless pioneering spirit, a love of learning, and an obligation to fight for the underdog. At the turn of the century, at age 17, Betty’s mother Alliene Richards traveled across Texas, by train and in an open buckboard to teach in a one-room school on the old Matador Ranch.

That’s where she met another educator, Joshua Parsons, who courted her four years before she agreed to marry him.

Alliene and Joshua had three children, David, and the twins, Jane and Betty, who were born in Memphis, TX. Plain and simple names—nothing in the middle--just Jane and Betty Parsons. Betty told me she was really excited when she got married not just to acquire a husband--but a middle name as well!

When the twins were eight, their father was killed. It was during the Depression and he had driven to California to rescue relatives of a friend who were out there sick, with no money or transportation. On the way home, their car was struck by a train at an unmarked railroad crossing. Aileen Parsons took her children back east to Texarkana to live with her elder sister, known as “Big Auntie” and Uncle Lloyd (of the pecan grove).

Jane and Betty became part of an extended family of grandmother, aunts and neighbors who kept them on the straight and narrow and cousins who occasionally helped them slip free of it. When they walked to the nearby picture show, their mother would call Mrs. Vaught at the theater and tell her the twins were on their way. When they left, Mrs. Vaught would call Mrs. Parsons to say the twins were coming home. It did take a village, didn’t it?

Under this close and loving scrutiny, Betty and Jane grew in beauty and grace and picked pecans for their uncle for 25 cents a jar.

All three children contracted rheumatic fever when it made the rounds of the south, Betty’s case the most serious. She spent 18 solid months in bed—her feet never touching the floor. Her bedroom became a salon where neighbors would call to bring buttons for her collection or autographs from famous people who passed through town. Betty later claimed that this enforced convalescence kept her from growing to her full potential like the much taller Jane. Short of stature. Big of spirit.

The twins were like two halves of a whole, although that didn’t prevent the occasional sisterly spat. After one such dust-up, Jane threatened to write to Washington and have the government declare that they were no longer twins. Betty wept and wept at this dire prospect. This is probably the only case of big government that Betty Dooley ever opposed.

Betty and Jane dressed identically as twins are supposed to—even when they headed off to become Red Raiders at Texas Tech in Lubbock. For one of the big dances, they had identical backless ball gowns made. Since the dress design did not allow for foundation garments, Betty’s room mate, Sandy Hudson, wrapped her round and round with masking tape to manage her bosoms.

The Parsons twins were fantastic dancers. They learned by dancing together and always found each other to be the best of partners. Husbands and girl friends used to hang their heads or look the other way when Betty and Jane would take to the floor to swoop and swirl and dip to the music.

We have a picture of 19-year-old Betty as the bride of Robert Dooley. She’s wearing a lovely Christian Dior suit and matching hat. Jane is standing next to her in the exact same outfit. Don’t you think Robert did a double-take when they proceeded down the aisle?

Her husband took Betty back west, where he started out as a roughneck in the oil fields and successfully worked his way into a number of businesses. The young couple had wild old times on the edge of the frontier. Betty always talked about the fierce boys from nearby Faulk, Texas, who loved nothing better than a good set-to in lieu of polite conversation. Dealing with this style of free-wheeling debate equipped her well for the rough and tumble of Washington.

Eventually Betty made a name for herself in local politics, engendering a coterie of conservative critics. One evening, a particularly large and obnoxious woman of their acquaintance kept heckling Betty at a fancy house party. Betty would smile sweetly and move to another room, only to be followed by her tormentor. Finally Robert Dooley had had enough. He turned to the woman’s husband, a short and henpecked bald-headed man, and proclaimed: “Your wife can’t talk to my wife that way!” Then he punched him in the jaw. The little man collapsed into a ball and rolled out the front door to the cheers of the crowd.

Betty confessed that she found Washington parties sadly lacking when she first came to town—without a single fist-fight to get the evening off to an exciting start or finish.

The 1950s were conservative times and west Texas a conservative place. The saying was that they only let a new liberal into Midland-Odessa after an old one died. But Betty was a risk-taker who didn’t mind the odds. “Luck has no memory and God hates a coward!” she’d tell me. So she ran for Congress in what was then the largest geographic district in the country against an entrenched Republican opponent.

“I knew I was in trouble when the good ole boy who pumped my gas took me aside at the filling station. He wiped the oil from his face and under his nails and told me, “Miz Dooley, you are a good and righteous lady, but I can’t vote for you. You know Democrats are for LABOR and we can’t have none of that!”

Undeterred by defeat, Betty invited Eleanor Roosevelt to come speak in Odessa, despite predictions that the former First Lady wouldn’t be welcome. She rented the high school stadium and prayed for a miracle.

“It was like the loaves and fishes,” she told me. “People came in from hundreds of miles around. They rode in pick-up trucks, some even rode in on horseback. We had wildcatters and bankers, Baptists and Catholics, little kids and society ladies, filling every bleacher on the football field to hear Mrs. Roosevelt. They gave her a standing ovation to start and finish and maintained reverent silence in between. I saw one old cowboy with tears rolling down his weathered cheeks and I knew I’d done something really important.”

What else was important in Betty’s life? She was enchanted by her children. Bob and Melissa were sent straight from Heaven for her delight. She never outgrew the wonder of having produced two such brilliant, beautiful and original creatures.

Ask her how she was and you’d first hear about Bob’s catfish restaurant or his brokerage business then about how Melissa was now painting smaller abstracts that were even finer than her large oils. If that was possible.

Or we’d learn that Jane’s latest book was selling well. And that she had beaten out Larry McMurtry for the best Texas short story prize with a touching piece called “My Mother Had a Maid.” Later on, we’d also hear how her nearly perfect grand daughter Elizabeth had posed for the Neiman-Marcus catalogue or had become an ardent outdoorswoman at Sewanee.

Isn’t it wonderful that Betty had these last two years of good health after a near-brush with death in 1998? She retired from WREI and used her time wisely to gather family and friends closer to her heart.

Most of you know that she and Melissa and Blue the dog and Spot the cat spent a wonderful six months in a small villa outside Florence last year. They made memories of a lifetime in Impruenta, especially when Jane and Dub andElizabeth and Sam came to call. A life-long learner, Betty studied Italian while she was there and was actually getting quite good at it.

Ever the entrepreneur, she had just drafted the first chapter of a book she planned to write about her Italian odyssey. It was to include the time she and Melissa had to go to the veterinarian’s office to get their flu shots and how Blue almost ate a gypsy peddler!

But let’s get back to the chronology. From Tuscany of today to Texas thirty years ago.

In 1969, Betty ran a close but unsuccessful race for the State legislature. Then she and Robert Dooley divorced after 26 years of marriage and it seemed a logical time to try her wings elsewhere. She moved to Washington in 1971 with only $75 and a Chevron credit card. Through the intercession of her dear friend and Austin partner-in-crime, Nadine Eckhardt, Betty landed a job as regional director for the Health Security Action Council, a consortium of unions working for enactment of national health insurance. For six years, she traveled to every state in the union, organizing events with the UAW, the Farmworkers and the Machinists.

There was a constant problem about finding union hotels and union printers in those days. Not displaying the union bug was a serious affront. One time, she and a friend sat up all night cutting the non-union labels out of the sheets and pillowcases in 50 hotel rooms they’d reserved for a conference. Betty thought she was home-free until they served a salad at lunch the next day. Cesar Chavez took one look at the lettuce, proclaimed that it had been picked by non-union labor and led everyone out the door of the dining room in solidarity.

In 1977, Betty was hired as the first executive director of the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues. This was a bipartisan group of the 17 women then in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. They felt they served two constituencies—the one they were elected to represent and the 51% of the U.S. population who were women.

Betty hired me, and for three years we labored in the Congresswomen’s Retiring Room on the fourth floor of the Rayburn Building. This was an exciting and challenging time for the women’s movement. The Equal Rights Amendment passed Congress and was being voted in the States. The Caucus got bills through to promote women’s health research, economic security, education and employment. We took on pension reform and child support enforcement and rural women’s inheritance taxes and won. We made a difference.

It soon became obvious that the Caucus needed a non-partisan research arm to provide legislators unimpeachable facts and figures to make the case for women. In 1980, we formed the Women’s Research & Education Institute or WREI. Betty took over as head of WREI and we established a number of projects that are still going strong today. Here are just three of them:

The American Woman – an acclaimed series of books that examine nearly every aspect of women’s lives. The eighth edition, Getting to the Top, about women’s leadership was dedicated to Betty.

The Congressional Fellowships on Women & Public Policy – over the past 22 years, we’ve placed 222 outstanding scholars in House and Senate offices to work for nine months on issues affecting women and their families. This is the only program on Capitol Hill designed for, by and about women. Its alumnae are assuming leadership roles in their fields as social workers, surgeons, nurse-midwives, lawyers, film-makers, ranchers and farmers.

Then there’s the Center for Women in the Military, which works to expand the rights and responsibilities of women in uniform and is of particular relevance as women are serving—and dying—in Afghanistan.

Betty taught me everything about getting an organization off and running. She was a fundraiser par excellence. Gloria Steinem describes fundraising as the world’s second oldest profession. I have watched Betty make 20 phone calls to ask for money, receive 19 absolute no’s and one maybe and come away cheerful. She was simply too stubborn to give up. During WREI’s early years, we never had more than two months of funding in the bank. Twenty years later, her legacy is a strong, dynamic and respected organization that carries on with the work she started and the principles she stood for.

As WREI grew, we moved off Capitol Hill into a nearby townhouse, took on new staff—China Jessup, Anne Stone and Sara Rix—and adopted a cat named Geraldine. I can remember so many wonderful conclaves around the conference table, debating cabbages and kings. One afternoon, China and Betty—both proficient tap dancers-- taught the rest of the WREI staff how to “Shuffle off to Buffalo!” Betty had a life-long pattern of taking professional colleagues and making them friends for life.

She taught us wonderful Texas expressions, like “He‘s behaving like a plus-perfect fool” or “meaner than a striped snake” or “you’ve been so nice I’m going to buy you a collie dog.”

One time, we were pondering strategy and Betty cried out, “Mercy. My hands look like horse’s hooves! I’m going to go get myself a manicure!”

Betty saw the world. She traveled to Nairobi and Beijing for UN conferences; she recruited eastern European Fellows in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary; she cruised the Amazon and the Mediterranean with WREI’s Board president Jean Stapleton. One summer, she took a sabbatical at the Oxford University’s Center for Cross Cultural Research on Women and taught the Brits about outreach and fundraising.

Betty didn’t just take risks with her career, she was always up for an adventure. Not long after we met, she broke her shoulder while roller skating around Dupont Circle after church. She went parasailing in a creaky harness with Emma Burnett in Mexico and white water rafting down very non-senior courses in West Virginia.

Betty was a beautiful woman who surrounded herself with beauty. Those who’ve been lucky enough to visit her stunning blue and white apartment in the Altmont know what I mean. That’s where Betty moved after being evicted from her apartment on New Hampshire Avenue for having too many loud parties.

Melissa’s paintings hold pride of place. And there’s a swing in the bedroom. A memorable feature of her home are Betty’s favorite quotes, which have been painted onto the walls by a calligrapher. My personal favorite—from Oscar Wilde--is in the bathroom. It has been engraved backwards so you can only read it while looking at yourself in the mirror:

“It is only the superficial who do not judge by appearance!”

What meals came out of her kitchen! A beer and sirloin steak soup called caldea; chicken fried steak with white gravy; and blackberry Jam Cake. Around the ceiling fan, a quote reads: “Cooking—like love—must be entered into with abandon or not at all!”

What parties we enjoyed at 1901 Wyoming! Any occasion called for a Dixieland band or Irish strummers or a mariachi trio. Once Betty had a bagpiper lead a parade of guests up and down every floor in the building.

She was a creature of unlimited imagination, who thought outside the box in decorating her house, in pursuing her career, in raising her children: “I was a product of my Mother’s imagination,” Melissa told me last night.

Finally, I want to talk about Betty’s faith, although that’s more Frank Wade’s department. She was a muscular Christian who would bring blankets or food to a homeless man on a grate outside our offices. And then she’d pester him until he ate and wrapped up.

Her faith met the test of terrible times. When her beloved son Bob was killed by a car in 1987, I asked how she could bear it. Her reply? “Because I know God loves me.”

Betty was a vibrant woman, a devoted mother and sister, a faithful friend, delightful companion, and ardent fighter. She loved life but was not afraid of dying.

The last quote she had put on the wall next to her bed sums it up best. It’s from the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer:

It is night after a long day
What has been done has been done;
What has not been done has not been done;
Let it be.

I’m going to doff my hat in honor of Betty Dooley. And if anybody is going to clap for a life well lived, this is the time to do so.

---Susan Scanlan
January 14, 2002

WREI has established a memorial fund to honor Betty Dooley, WREI’s founder and president for twenty years. The Betty Parsons Dooley Memorial Fund will support research and reporting on women’s health—the issue always first in Betty’s heart.

Contributions may be made to:

The Betty Parsons Dooley Memorial Fund at WREI
3300
Washington, DC 20006

Susan Scanlan's eulogy is also available for download (PDF).