Margaret Betty Lord

Margaret Betty Lord, 97, died from advanced age, with COVID-19 as a contributing factor, on April 14, 2021. She was a resident of the Mayflower Retirement Community Health Center in Winter Park, Florida. She was born in 1923 in Bridgetown, Barbados, to Beryl and Reginald Johnson. Her father was a manager of various Caribbean branches of the Royal Bank of Canada. Betty was a graduate of Codrington High School, Barbados, where she was Head Girl. Her plans to attend university in England were stifled by the Second World War, as it was too dangerous to cross the Atlantic by boat. During the course of her long life, she lived in Montserrat, British Guyana, Grenada, and Dominica (in the West Indies); Burlington (Iowa); and Maitland (Florida). She married Robert Owen Lord, Jr., of Evanston, Illinois, in Dominica in 1948, was widowed in 1969, and lost her only son, Robert Owen Lord, III, in a car accident in 1970. She worked for many years as a teller at the Farmers and Merchants Bank and Trust in Burlington. Betty guarded her British accent and was always surprised when anyone instantly recognized her voice on the phone. She was possessed of a generous heart, great intelligence, practicality, and a wry wit. She loved her daughters Linda (Maitland) and Catherine (New York City), who survive her, as well as angels, roses, her garden, reading, cooking, telling stories, English china, flan, and a needlework pillow that read: UPPITY WOMEN UNITE! According to her wishes, her ashes will be interred in the Starker mausoleum at Aspen Grove Cemetery, Burlington, next to those of her husband and her son.