Betty Lazarus, a summer resident of Chilmark for 50 years, died on Tuesday, March 10, at her home in Urbana, Ill., where she has lived with her husband David since 1949 and where they raised their four children, Barbara, William, Mary Ann and Richard. Betty and her family spent their first 20 Vineyard summers renting the Parsonage near Beetlebung Corner in Chilmark, before she and her husband moved into their own summer home on Middle Road.

The daughter of Ethel and James Ross, Betty Lazarus was born in Chicago, Ill., on Feb. 22, 1923. She grew up in Winnetka, Ill., and graduated from New Trier High School before attending the University of Chicago where she met her husband of 65 years, David, when he was a 17-year old college freshman and she was a 16-year old high school student. Married in 1943, they first lived in Cambridge during World War II where David worked at Harvard on radar jamming and she worked at a local bookstore until they decided she should volunteer at a local hospital instead because she was spending far more money on books than she was earning.

Betty loved the Vineyard and Chilmark. During their first 10 Vineyard summers, they shared the Parsonage on Menemsha Crossroad with their close family friends, the Wattenbergs. A total of four parents and seven children lived together under one roof at a time when the Parsonage did not boast of running water, but instead a celebrated two-seater outhouse named The Jaguar by the children. Perhaps for that reason, both families were known as fixtures at the Chilmark Community Center. After building their own home in 1979, Betty and David no longer limited their time at the Vineyard to the summer. They would arrive in May, stay until mid-October and return again for several weeks in January and March. Betty immersed herself in the Chilmark community. She was a regular presence at the Chilmark Community Center, Sewards Grocery, the Post Office, Pandora’s Box, The Galley, and Menemsha. In the summers, Betty and David were joined by their children and then grandchildren. More than 20 family members would gather together under Betty and David’s roof for housing, meals, lively conversation, and the mid-August celebration of Betty and David’s wedding anniversary.

Betty was celebrated in Chilmark as a gifted gardener. Visitors to her Chilmark home invariably remarked at the beauty of the surrounding flowers. But it was Betty’s vegetable garden that received the most formal recognition. Until very recently, Betty’s vegetables routinely won blue ribbons at the annual Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Fair in West Tisbury, as did her chutneys and brownies.

Even the beauty of her garden, however, was surpassed by the community of Vineyard friends that Betty grew and maintained over the decades. The community naturally began with Chilmark academics, but quickly extended to Island and summer artists, musicians, writers, doctors, and professionals of all stripes. Betty’s Vineyard family was extended and crossed generations, embracing first the children of her friends and then eventually the children of those children. Night after night, week after week, month after month, and year after year, the community remained intact, together. It seemed like it never would, and never should end, even as the loss of close friends inevitably increased in recent years. As longtime Chilmark friend Bobby Solow described upon learning of Betty’s death, she was “the glue that kept us together.” Betty herself once chose these words to describe her outlook on life: “Families are for building a better community. Families are for belonging to something bigger than just yourself.”

Betty was a passionate advocate for social justice, especially back in Illinois. She worked with Head Start in the early 1960s, then working in the 1970s to create a suicide prevention service and hotline for youth. No doubt her single greatest contribution to her Urbana community was her successful promotion in 1972 of a county tax that created a county mental health board that provided financial support for essential social services and for which Betty served as the first executive director from 1972 through 1978. She was also active with the League of Women Voters and served on the board of directors of the Voices for Illinois Children until 2006. At the Vineyard, she was a frequent volunteer at Polly Hill Arboretum.

She is survived by her loving husband David, her children, William, Mary Ann, and Richard, niece Amanda, sons in law Marvin Sirbu and Daniel Jay, daughters in law Suellen Lazarus and Jeannette Austin, dear friend Karen Frerichs, grandchildren Margaret and Benjamin Sirbu, Eben and Oliver Lazarus, David, Laura, and Michael Jay, and Samuel and Jesse Lazarus, great-grandchild Brooklyn Beth Campisi, Amanda’s husband Michael Siegel, and grand nieces Johanna and Rosalie Siegel.

There will be a memorial service at the Levis Faculty Center at the University of Illinois on April 26 at 10 a.m. and burial this summer at Abel’s Hill on the day that would have been Betty and David’s 66th wedding anniversary. In lieu of flowers, Betty’s family has suggested that those interested in making donations in her name consider two of her favorite organizations, the Polly Hill Arboretum (pollyhillarboretum.org) and Voices for Illinois Children (voices4kids.org).