Irene Betts
Historical group’s decision comes after protesters tore statue down
Homosassa, Fla. — Irene Theresa (Warczyglowa) Betts died peacefully on Friday, Aug. 17, 2018, at her home in Homosassa.
She was born March 25, 1928, in Reading, Pa., to Mary (Warczyglowa) Kubacki. She and her family moved to Cleveland, Ohio in the late 1930s.
Irene met Frederick Milton Betts of Wolcott, N.Y., and they married on Jan. 3, 1953. Fred was an enlisted man in the U.S. Coast Guard and retired from the service as a lithographer chief in 1968. Fred and Irene lived very briefly in Washington, D.C. before moving to Mystic in 1953. Besides raising a family of five children, Irene helped Fred run the Betts Printing Company and the Sea-Mist Haven restaurant in Mystic until they retired to Homosassa, Fla. in 1980. During their retirement, Fred and Irene traveled to China and Hawaii. They also made many road trips within the United States and Canada. She and Fred loved going to flea markets and auctions.
Irene was preceded in death by her beloved husband, Fred, on Aug. 21, 2012, in Homosassa.
She is survived by her son, Michael Terry Betts of Homosassa, Fla.; daughter, Karen (Betts) Potrebenko of Rycroft, Alberta, Canada; son, Jon Frederick Betts of Homosassa, Fla.; son, James Paul Betts of Hudson, Fla.; daughter, Mary Ellen (Betts) Morgan and husband, Steve; granddaughter, Diahann Patricia Potrebenko of Rycroft, Alberta, Canada; great-grandson, Alexander Frederick Hunt of Rycroft, Alberta, Canada; daughter-in-law, Deborah (Bergdorf) Betts of Homosassa, Fla.; and sister, Sylvia Wrentmore of Apopka, Fla.
Fred and Irene will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery sometime next year. The ceremony will be private.
In lieu of flowers, if friends so desire, donations may be made in Irene’s memory to the Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation, 110 East 42nd St., 16th Floor, New York, NY 10017 or at alzinfo.org.
Online condolences may be sent to the family at www. HooperFuneralHome.com.
Arrangements by the Homosassa Chapel of Hooper Funeral Homes & Crematory.
Raleigh, N.C. — Three Confederate monuments will remain on the North Carolina Capitol grounds, but with newly added context about slavery and civil rights. That’s the decision from a state historical panel, two days after protesters tore down another rebel statue at the state’s flagship university.
The state Historical Commission was responding Wednesday to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s request nearly a year ago to move the monuments to a nearby battlefield.
The commission voted 10-1 to reinterpret the three monuments with adjacent signs about “the consequences of slavery” and the “subsequent oppressive subjugation of African American people.” It urged construction of a memorial to black citizens, which has been discussed for years, as soon as possible. The group of academics, amateur historians and preservationists also acknowledged that the monuments erected decades after the Civil War near the old 1840 Capitol are imbalanced toward the Civil War and the Confederacy.
Cooper responded with a statement decrying a 2015 law passed by the GOP-controlled state legislature that sharply restricts where state and local government officials can relocate such memorials and all but bars their permanent removal. He also said the toppling of the Confederate statue known as “Silent Sam” on Monday night at the University of North Carolina was an example of what happens when people feel their leaders won’t act on their concerns.
“The actions that toppled Silent Sam bear witness to the strong feelings many North Carolinians have about Confederate monuments. I don’t agree with or condone the way that monument came down, but protesters concluded that their leaders would not — could not — act on the frustration and pain it caused,” Cooper said.
Commission member Samuel Dixon, part of a five-member committee that made the recommendations, said that the 2015 law limited what the commission could do.
“I believe the monuments need to tell the truth and based upon the law that we have today I do not think we can move them,” said Dixon, an Edenton lawyer. “But I think we can ... tell a better story and tell a full and inclusive story.”
Dixon voted with the majority.
But commission member and Bennett College professor Valerie Johnson, who is black, said removal would be appropriate because of the monuments’ links to the Jim Crow era.
“The monuments represent the commitment of North Carolina to uphold the Confederacy. These monuments are a continual visual presence of the ideology of white supremacy,” said Johnson, who voted against portions of the commission resolution. “Removal is not erasure. It is creating a space that reflects all North Carolinians and their contributions to our state.”
Quick vote
The commission’s vote came about 36 hours after the “Silent Sam” statue was toppled on UNC’s Chapel Hill campus. The bronze figure of an anonymous soldier was pulled down from its stone pedestal by protesters who used banners to mask their action.
The statue had been under constant, costly police surveillance after being vandalized in recent months. Many students, faculty and alumni argued that “Silent Sam” symbolized racism and asked officials to take it down.
Republican legislative leaders praised the committee’s recommendations and its civil discourse in contrast to what Senate leader Phil Berger called “mob rule” in Chapel Hill.
The 2015 law “provides for collaborative solutions to use our state’s history to unite, rather than divide, our citizens,” House Speaker Tim Moore said in a release.
One woman who interrupted Wednesday’s meeting by shouting was led out and put in a police car. It wasn’t immediately clear what charges she could face. Police kept a heavy presence around the building and the monuments.
Frank Powell with the Sons of Confederate Veterans in North Carolina couldn’t say whether the group would support the “contextualizing” of the monuments. Commissioners repeatedly emphasized that slavery caused the Civil War, but Powell said that oversimplifies what were its many causes.
Still, Powell said, the commission’s decision was “the best outcome we could have hoped for under the circumstances.” The commission and a state department will decide on the re-interpretation language.
The monuments on the Capitol grounds include the Capitol Confederate Monument, dedicated in May 1895; the Henry Lawson Wyatt Monument, dedicated in June 1912; and the North Carolina Confederacy Monument, dedicated in June 1914.
Cooper asked last September that they be moved to the Bentonville Battlefield site about 45 miles away.
His request followed a violent white nationalist rally over a Confederate statue in Charlottesville, Va., and the toppling of a Confederate statue outside a Durham County government building by demonstrators.