Betty Jane Remembers Her Life


Betty Jane Seefeldt (Nee: Morales) was born in Washington, DC, on December 5, 1923. Her father, Taylor Shackleford Morales, was born and reared in Berryville, VA; her mother, Mellie Chauncey, was born and reared on South Fairfax Street in Alexandria, VA. She had a younger brother, Donald, who died in 1986. When she was about four years old, she and her parents moved to Hyattsville, MD where she attended elementary and high school. After she graduated from Hyattsville High School, she received business training at Temple Secretarial School in the District of Columbia. She completed that course in 1941, the year the United States entered World War II. During the war years and afterwards she attended night classes at George Washington University and worked at the Army Map Service and other government agencies. The longest time was spent at the Coast and Geodetic Survey in the Department of Commerce on Constitution Avenue where she was secretary to the Assistant Chief of the Geodesy Division.

During the war, she was a volunteer Junior Hostess at the Stage Door Canteen at the old Belasco Theater on Lafayette Square near the White House and a volunteer Red Cross Nurses Aide at the Providence Hospital in the District of Columbia.

During her youth she was a member of Wallace Memorial United Presbyterian Church in Northwest Washington which conveniently moved to a newly built building in West Hyattsville, MD.

She met her husband, Bill, who was from the Philadelphia area, through friends while vacationing at Ocean City, MD. They were married in 1958 in the Wallace Memorial chapel. A year later. in 1959, they moved to the new Rose Hill Park subdivision, not far from where Bill was working as a Budget Analyst at the Pentagon. Their son, Bart, was then two months old. Their daughter, Carol, joined the family in 1961. Both went to kindergarten in Bush Hill Presbyterian Church day school. Fairfax County then had no public kindergarten for the five year olds. Her family was very important to her. They were all very close and often went on beach vacations together, even after the grandchildren had arrived, of which there were seven. Birthdays and holidays were always happy events.

She joined Bush Hill Presbyterian Church in 1964 and has been a member of Ruth Circle for a number of years. She has worked in the nursery and library, was in charge of the meals on wheels program and served as a financial secretary for about five years. Her faith, the church, the pastors and the people always meant a lot to her -- a very important part of her life.

In her mid-fifties, after the children had gone away to college and left home, she went back to work for the federal government, finally retiring at the age of sixty-one.

[The foregoing account was written by Betty Jane in February 2001. She does not mention that she had survived two bouts with cancer, in 1985 and 1995. By 2001, these and other infirmities had taken a severe toll on her health; therefore she did not add to this memoir. Sufficient to say that, in these latter years, she suffered with courage and good humor and only grew dearer to those who knew her. -WJS.]