Elizabeth Musser Miller

Elizabeth “Betty” M. Miller, aged 101, of Burke, VA, died on May 5th at the Fairfax Nursing home in Fairfax, VA. She was born on May 9th, 1909, in Jenkintown, PA, the daughter of Christian Dale Musser and Elizabeth Quinn Musser. After the early death of her father, her Irish immigrant mother sent her to Bellefonte, PA, to live with the family of her paternal aunt. She graduated from Bellefonte High School. In 1936, she married “Big John” Miller, a legendary Bellefonte High School football coach and mathematics teacher. Her husband predeceased her in 1975. She had a brief secretarial career, spending most of her life as a homemaker. An active member of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Bellefonte, she was a choir member in her youth and active in the Altar Guild as an adult. She had enduring interests in art, bridge, gardening, and the outdoors. One of a group of the pretty Bellefonte girls who exercised horses for and who were taught to ride by the members of one of the last Cavalry units in the U.S., she won a first in show for jumping at the Harrisburg Horse Show in her late teens. When the first air mail plane landed at Bellefonte, she and the family dog, Teddy, were given a short ride. Teddy was terrified; Betty was thrilled. In the 1940s, she took advantage of the adult art education courses offered by the high school; later, she took courses in oil painting from Hobson Pittman and Jolene Snyder Ott at The Pennsylvania State University. A talented painter, she instinctively worked her way through the history of art, starting in a primitive “Grandma Moses” style and ending as a Postimpressionist. She sold many of her paintings, more than she later wished she had. She was one of the committee that began the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts. The first Head Docent at the university’s Palmer Museum of Art, she was later recognized as a Docent Emerita. She was also a member of The Antiquists, a State College-based women’s club with strong interests in antiques; and a Friend of the Centre County Library and Historical Museum and of the Bellefonte Historical Museum. In 1987, she moved to Burke, VA, to live with her only child, Pamela A. Miller, who survives. In Burke she pursued her interests in art, enjoying the national museums; and bridge, joining a club of much younger women who were attracted by her lively intelligence, wit, and constant kindness and who cherish her memory. She drove a car until 2002, when she became a resident of the Fairfax Nursing Center, Fairfax, VA, where she continued to play bridge with the residents and her club until the year before her death. Her ashes will be interred in Zion Cemetery, PA, beside her husband.