Betty Jane (BJ) Woodrow Parrent died Nov. 24 in Jupiter, Fla., after a long struggle with cancer. She was 81.

BJ was a longtime visitor to the Island, having first come as a child with her parents, Edwin Woodrow and Frida Krokenes Woodrow on the steamer Nobska from New York, and staying with the William Luce family in Vineyard Haven. She returned to the Island in 1951 with her first husband, Carl Zahn, and beginning in 1960, returned yearly with Carl and their children, renting a cottage on Lagoon Pond in Oak Bluffs owned by Priscilla Mead, and in 1964, a cottage owned by the Williams family that was one or two doors away from the Meads. It was an unusually cool August in 1964, so BJ and Carl amused themselves by looking at properties that were for sale. They found a summer cottage on Newton avenue across the street from the Lagoon that BJ thought had “possibilities.” They bought the cottage from Leide Oliver that summer.

The Zahn family settled into summers on the Lagoon, with Carl coming down on weekends and BJ soaking up the sun with her children and entertaining her Vineyard and off-Island friends. Under the tutelage of Jan Mead and Bob Rheault, she became an avid sailor, taking the family sailfish out for daily sails on the Lagoon. She delighted in excursions to up-Island beaches, packing the kids, food, beach towels, toys and the dog into the family station wagon in the morning and returning at dusk to the cottage on Newton avenue. Although BJ and Carl divorced in 1977, she continued to maintain her ties to the Vineyard, taking frequent boating trips there with friends and family and later with her husband George Parrent, whom she married in 1989. Her mother, Frida, is buried in the Oak Grove Cemetery in Vineyard Haven.

She was born Sept. 11, 1927 in Philadelphia. Her father was English and her mother Norwegian, both naturalized U.S. citizens. Her father was an advertising artist and illustrator in New York city. BJ graduated from Somerville High School and entered Radcliffe College in 1945. She majored in English and received her degree in 1949. Her first job was as secretary to Clare Booth Luce at Flair magazine in New York city. She had met Carl during their studies at Harvard, where both sang in the Glee Club. BJ and Carl married in 1950 and settled into an apartment in Greenwich Village. They moved to Massachusetts in 1951 and purchased a home in Wellesley in 1956 where BJ lived until she remarried.

After raising her children, she obtained a master’s degree in education from Northeastern University; however, the teacher market in Boston had withered. She was able to do substitute teaching, but later obtained a position in the counseling office at Tufts University, where she worked until her marriage to George Parrent. BJ and George lived first in Chelmsford, and later built a vacation home in Falmouth. BJ retired from the working world and enjoyed entertaining friends and family and traveling with her husband.

She often visited her daughter Karen in Sarasota, Fla., and it was there that she began to think more about Florida as a winter home. After George reached a semi-retirement point with his company, BJ and George became snowbirds, wintering in a new home in Jupiter and summering in Falmouth. BJ was able to indulge in her favorite pastimes of swimming and sunning in both locations and last September her wish was to be in her home in Jupiter, which is where she spent her final months.

In addition to her husband, George, and her former husband, Carl, she is survived by three children, Lisa, Karen LeMonte, and Richard, and two grandchildren.

A remembrance is planned for the spring of 2009.