ELIZABETH STAVELY
MENDOCINO, Calif. – Elizabeth Williams ("Betty") Stavely, 102, died peacefully at her Mendocino, California, home on Thursday, December 18, 2014. Born in Syracuse, New York, on August 28, 1912, she was the daughter of Raymond Williams of Greene and Jessie (Hauck) Williams, of Syracuse. She attended Cornell University, graduating with a degree in botany in 1935. In 1938, she married a biochemist, Homer E. Stavely, and together they raised three sons, living in New Jersey and Indiana. In 1974, a year after the death of her husband, she moved to Mendocino, the home of her youngest son and his family. Betty lived in Mendocino for forty years, taking an active part in many community organizations and devoting herself to helping to raise her three California granddaughters.
Despite living her entire adult life elsewhere, Betty never lost her love for her New York State origins. She showed her love of her alma mater, Cornell, throughout her life, attending almost every five-year reunion of her class through the 75th in 2010. She also graduated from Norwich High School in 1931.
But above all Betty Stavely was fond of Greene. She felt that visits to Greene to her grandparents, George O. and Julia Williams, and her aunt, Mary Williams, were "by far the most exciting events in my childhood." Just when Betty was beginning to raise her own family, in the early 1940s, her father and mother moved back to Greene, into the same house on South Chenango Street in which her father, Ray Williams, had been raised. Betty jumped at the chance to give her own children a taste of what she had herself experienced as a child, bringing them regularly to Greene for visits to their grandparents.
Betty had imbibed from her father a strong interest in family and local history, and over the years she and her sister Jane Williams Kelly regularly provided information and anecdotes that were used for articles in the Chenango American. The Williams sisters also contributed items to the Moore Memorial Library and the Greene Historical Society's Town Museum. In 2002, members of Betty's family gathered from far and near to celebrate her 90th birthday in Greene. A lifelong subscriber, she continued to enjoy reading the Chenango American almost to the day of her death.
Elizabeth Stavely will be greatly missed by her three sons and their wives: Homer ("Tony") Stavely and Mary Mayshark-Stavely of Northfield, Massachusetts, Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald of Jamestown, Rhode Island, and James ("Jary") Stavely and Patricia Marien of Fort Bragg, California, and by her six grandchildren, two step-grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, and two step-great-grandchildren. She was predeceased by her beloved sister, Jane Williams Kelly of Broomfield, Colorado.
A memorial service and celebration of Betty Stavely's life will be held in the coming months, on a date to be announced.