Betty Jane Elder Stolz of Williamsburg, Va., formerly of Bethesda, Maryland, died peacefully on March 16, 2019. Born in Hopewell Va. on April 21, 1926, she was the only child of Dr. Jeffrey Neese Elder and Melville Fagg Elder. She graduated from Randolph Macon Women’s College in 1947. Married in Hopewell in 1950, Betty and her husband, Richard F. (Dick) Stolz Jr who pre-deceased her in 2012, spent much of their married life living abroad due to Dick’s career as an intelligence officer. Foreign assignments included Trieste, Munich, Istanbul, Frankfurt, Sofia, Moscow, Rome, Belgrade and London.
Betty was known to her many friends as a warm hostess, engaging conversationalist, epicure and fine cook, avid reader, loyal correspondent, Anglophile, creative writer, reluctant driver, adaptable homemaker, creator of inspired flower arrangements and possessor of a highly refined sense of design. To her children she was a loving mother who always encouraged them to read, travel and enjoy life.
Betty met Dick in New York City in 1949 when working in the interior decorating department of B. Altman. Following Dick’s last overseas posting in London, Betty became a docent at the Hillwood Estate Museum in Washington D.C., a perfect outlet for her deep knowledge of and love for decorative arts.
While living in London, Betty had occasion, when not frequenting museums and antique merchants, to attend formal events at which a prominent woman born on the same day and year as she, Queen Elizabeth II, was in attendance.
After moving to Williamsburg in 1997, Betty took volunteer guide positions at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Museum of Folk Arts and the St. George Tucker House.
Betty is survived by her three children, Sarah Stolz Sullivan of Johns Island, S.C., Richard F. Stolz III of Rockville, Md., and Robert J. Stolz of McLean, Va., their spouses Shaun, Sally, and Gisele, grandchildren Peter and his wife Analicia, Robert and his wife Faiza, Kyle, Spencer and his wife Vanessa, Alexander, Eva and Louise, and great-grandchildren Salma, Florentina and Oscar Benjamin.
Betty is to be buried in a family plot Hopewell next to her husband Dick.