Elizabeth D. ‘Betsy’ Barclay, retired teacher
Elizabeth D. “Betsy” Barclay, a retired Baltimore County Public Schools home economics teacher who enjoyed gardening and playing cards, died of a brain bleed June 20 at Sinai Hospital. The Towson resident was 92.
The former Elizabeth Ann Dowling, daughter of Arthur Edward Dowling, and Ruth Elizabeth Mackie, an educator, was born in Orange, New Jersey, and raised in Livingston, New Jersey.
After graduating from high school, Mrs. Barclay earned a bachelor’s degree in 1952 in home economics from Hood College on Frederick. She began teaching elementary school in Jacksonville, North Carolina, when her husband, Jerome A. Loughran Jr., an attorney whom she married in 1952, was serving in the Marine Corps. The couple later divorced.
Mrs. Barclay later earned a master’s degree in certified special education from what is now Loyola University Maryland. She taught home economics at Pikesville High School and Parkville High School until retiring from Baltimore County Public Schools in the mid-1990s.
The former Ellicott City resident moved to Rodgers Forge in 1967, and in 1975, after she married Joseph Stevenson Barclay, a safety engineer, the couple moved to a home in Stoneleigh.
Mrs. Barclay volunteered with The Arc and the scholarship program at the Glen Meadows Retirement Community, where she and her husband had moved. She also had been state president of Delta Kappa Gamma and was an active member of the Lutherville-Timonium Kiwanis Club.
After moving to the Edenwald Retirement Community in Towson, she also volunteered with its scholarship program for staff members.
An avid gardener, she had been a member of the Stoneleigh Garden Club. Mrs. Barclay also liked playing bridge. She and her husband, who died in 2007, liked traveling the country in their recreational vehicle and were volunteers at the auto races in Summit Point, West Virginia.
Mrs. Barclay was an active communicant of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Comforter at 130 W. Seminary Ave. in Lutherville, where a memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. July 23.
She is survived by two sons, Michael S. Loughran of Piney Point in St. Mary’s County and Thomas J. Loughran of St. George Island in St. Mary’s County; a daughter, Ann Loughran Aumann of Towson; a stepson, Robert C. Barclay of Perry Hall; a stepdaughter, Suzanne B. Tuchler of Campbell, California; a brother, John F. Dowling of Las Cruces, New Mexico; 10 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.