50 Years, 50 Profiles (Elizabeth White) – continued from page 5
A favorite parable is the one about the mustard seed, because she has a real life example of how this works. Years
ago she bought an item at St. Clement’s thrift shop for $10, which she later sold on eBay for $450. $100 went
back to the thrift shop, $100 bought books for a school in southeast DC and $250 bought handicrafts from a
market in Guatemala, which were sold at Resurrection. This yielded $800, half of which was donated to ALIVE,
and half of which went to the Portland Oregon Rotary Club, which matched it, that total being matched by Rotary International to result in $1600 going to a fresh water project in Guatemala. Talk about leveraging one’s assets!
Sometime in the future the Whites are planning a move away from Alexandria, closer to the farm in Maryland
Profile #3 – Betsy Raymond
Betsy Raymond and her family came to
Resurrection in 1974 at the
recommendation of Jim Petty, a pastoral
counselor who worshipped at Resurrection,
and who thought the congregation would
be a good fit for Betsy, her Episcopal priest
husband and their two young sons. They
immediately liked the sense of community
and caring for each other that they found at
Resurrection. While that has remained
constant during her time here, Betsy acknowledges that some things have changed.
She recalls that although there was a strong
focus on the many families with young children in Resurrection’s early days, there was
always great diversity in the congregation
because many people from Goodwin
House worshipped at
Resurrection before GH acquired its own
chaplain. Betsy remembers, too, the many
activities of the Open Classroom for
children, in particular the day they made a
papier mache model of the severed head of
John the Baptist.
A native West Virginian, Betsy attended Marshall University, where she enjoyed acting in college plays. A
favorite role was the lead in The Heiress. She still returns to West Virginia regularly for the Contemporary
American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown.
Betsy retired from her career as a clinical social worker in private practice last December. She specialized in
working with children, but had clients of all ages in her practice. She likes the more relaxed pace her life now has,
allowing more time for her two grandsons in Texas, her two grandda