And how’s Miss Betty?

It was the kind of faux pas you can’t believe actually happened.

I was accustomed to seeing John shopping at Kroger alone - it was an arrangement that worked for him and Betty. And when I saw him Wednesday morning, it was very easy to tell him he was looking good, because he was. He looked healthier and more cheerful than I’d seen him in ages.

He initiated the conversation, in fact, because my glasses were fogged over from groping around in the frozen juice compartment. He said something - I didn’t even hear what - and as I pulled out a couple of containers I remarked that drinking our daily orange-juice-with-calcium means more to us at breakfast time than drinking coffee.

When my glasses cleared and I could see who I was talking to, we exchanged the usual chatter. Then I added, “And how’s Miss Betty?”

“Betty died,” John replied, his grin gone and his eyes wide. “She died July 31.”

I was stunned. A quick check of my mental calendar reminded me that we were in a Tennessee state park the first week of August, and my hasty perusal of obits in recent Citizens had not revealed hers.

“Oh, John, I am so sorry,” I said, adding our excuses. “I didn’t know she was sick.”

“No one did,” he said. “I didn’t even know she was that sick. She kept it to herself, didn’t even want a funeral.”

That was Betty. A retired nurse, she saw herself as a caregiver, not a care receiver. She and John had blended two families 40-some years ago, added a few more children to the mix, and moved from the Northeast to Peachtree City shortly after we did in the early 1970s.

She was a dedicated supporter of the Fire Department in its formative days. Too busy to join the rescue-squad-in-training herself, working full-time in one of the Newnan hospitals (CCU, I believe) and with a house full of teens, she pitched in in any way she could.

I wrote a history of those early days, an intense time when Peachtree City’s institutions were a-borning, midwifed by residents who had a vision of the community’s future needs and how to meet them.

High on the list of equipment needed by an emergency medical service 40 minutes from a hospital were a heart-lung resuscitator and an electrocardiogram monitor/defibrillator - both strongly urged by Henry Drake, M.D., medical adviser to Peachtree City’s EMS. I forget now how much they cost, but at the time, it seemed a fortune.

Federal revenue-sharing money became available, and when the question of how to use it came up, a nurse rose before city council and proposed designating the money for the HLR and defibrillator.

The history continues: In 1974, the heart-lung resuscitator and the EKG monitor/defibrillator were delivered and placed in service, incredibly progressive technology for an all-volunteer organization.

That was Betty. Appearing before council was her idea. She made her case so eloquently in that low, smoky voice of hers, they didn’t know what hit them, and they made history by giving Peachtree City’s volunteers the means to restart a stalled heart outside of a hospital setting.

But there was a terrible irony. On the evening in February when the first class of EMTs was taking its final exam, her daughter was one of two teenagers killed while walking along Ga. Highway 74. The [cardiac] equipment would not have helped her, but it has saved lives in the years it has been in service.

The death of the teens rocked Peachtree City. Nearly everyone still knew everyone else in town and all the kids were acquainted. The entire community grieved.

I’ve cherished my friendship with Betty over the years, even though we didn’t see each other a lot. We shared heartaches and sometimes tried to make sense of our children’s lives, and we shared the joys and successes of raising our families.

Last year she let me pass on to you her pride in the progress of her youngest granddaughter, Danielle, now about 18.

Labeled “special” by educators, Danielle was certainly special in her grandmother’s eyes. She had learned American Sign Language and was teaching it to Betty at a stoplight when the driver next to her misinterpreted her extended fingers signing “I love you” and scratched off, sending her a finger gesture of his own.

When she called to share that story with me, she had come to see how funny the incident was, but when it happened, she was mortified.

There’s no way in the world that soft-spoken, genteel, gray-haired Betty would have stooped to anything so common, and she was embarrassed to think anyone else imagined she would.

Betty, I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to say goodbye. I’ll miss you. The world is a better place for your having lived here.

I love you.