Betty L. (Lipsitz) Singer, age 87, of Brookline, on Thursday, January 2, 2014. For 6l years, she was the beloved wife of the late Ernest A. Singer. Devoted daughter of the late Samuel & Ada (Baum) Lipsitz. Loving mother of David Singer of Brookline and Judith Singer Swartz & her husband Barry of Marietta, GA. Adored “Bubbie” of Shoshanah Swartz and Rachel Swartz Charles. Dear sister of the late Mildred Zanditon, Theodore and Harris Libby. Beloved aunt and a very special friend to many. Services at Congregation Kehillath Israel, 384 Harvard Street, Brookline on Sunday, January 5 at 10:30am. Burial in Beth El Cemetery, 776 Baker Street, West Roxbury. Shiva at her late residence following the burial through Friday afternoon. Mincha-Maariv Minyan Sunday through Thursday at 4:l5pm. Remembrances in her name would be appreciated to the Ernest Singer Scholarship, School of Social Work, San Diego University, 5580 Campanie Drive, San Diego, CA 92l82-1938 or a charity of one’s choice.
Betty Singer, who died at her Brookline home Thursday, January 2, 2014, was a longtime leader of efforts to protect abused children and support distressed families. She was 87.
Mrs. Singer was associated with Children’s Hospital for more than 40 years, for 20 of which she was chair of the hospital’s renowned Child Protection Team. She was active in a broad range of other organizations, most of them involved in youth issues. She worked on the Task Force on Children Out of School in the 1960s, advocated for lead poisoning in the 1970s, and working for Children with AIDS in the 1980s. She was instrumental in forming the Children’s AIDS Program at Boston City Hospital in the mid-1980s.
“Betty saved hundreds of children’s lives,” said Dr. Eli Newburger, a nationally recognized authority on violence and child abuse who led the medical personnel on Mrs. Singer’s child protection team. “She was a real champion of child protection and child welfare before these became such prominent concerns in American society. “She was motivated by the highest level of clinical principles,” Newburger said. “She was always concerned that we help the parents, even in situations where the children were greatly endangered… and had to be removed from the home.”
The Task Force on Children Out of School produced a report that led to passage of legislation providing educational services to children with special needs, first on the state level as Chapter 766 and later nationally. Hubie Jones, the influential social activist who headed the Task Force, said Mrs. Singer’s contribution to the effort “was tremendous. She was the sort of person you wanted to collaborate with – a great clinician, a tremendous advocate for children and a wonderful human being.”
Mrs. Singer was a longtime volunteer at Parents Anonymous, a family-support organization, and at the Carroll Center for the Blind, where as an expert brailler she translated menus from restaurants throughout the region into braille. She also translated braille into Hebrew and helped to create a Hebrew curriculum for blind children through the Jewish Braille Insititute.She was in the forefront of efforts to provide disadvantaged communities with access to Children’s Hosptal’s resources, and personally set up linkages between the hospital and the large numbers of Russian immigrants who came to Boston in the 1980s.
Born Barbara Carol Lipsitz in the midst of a blizzard, Mrs. Singer was delivered in her family’s home in Dorchester by an aunt. She attended Brookline High School and, at age 16, began her life’s work, volunteering for a children’s program at a settlement house in the then-economically-depressed South End. She entered Bard College early in World War II, but took a leave in the immediate aftermath of the conflict to volunteer helping war orphans in Belgium. The Lipsitzes were deeply religious Jews, and one of her favorite stories in later life was of her father taking her out to eat a non-kosher hamburger before she departed for Belgium because he was concerned that otherwise she might not eat the food that would be available in the war-ravaged country.
Mrs. Singer earned a master’s degree in social work at Simmons College and joined the staff of the psychology department at Children’s in the mid-1960s. She was appointed to the Child Protection Program, which was originally called the Trauma X Team in recognition of the wide variety of types of child abuse. She became chair in 1978 and held that position until her retirement in 2004.
The mother of two children, Mrs. Singer involved herself both in advocacy for children and families and in responding to those she felt tried to use children’s issues for their own purposes. For example, she testified in favor of the pro-choice position in 1977, when the Massachusetts Legislature was reviewing a right-to-life proposal whose proponents asserted that women with unwanted pregnancies should give up their babies for adoption.
She willingly stuck out her neck if she felt an injustice was being done.In 1980, believing a case of child abuse had been mishandled by a court, she advocated on behalf of the child in a letter to the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Trial Courts and others responsible for judicial review, detailing her concerns. The letter resulted in a suit against Mrs. Singer and the hospital alleging defamation of parental reputation. The lengthy trial ended in her vindication and enhanced her standing as an advocate.
She received awards from the Massachusetts chapters of the National Association of Social Workers and the American Professional Society on Abuse of Children for her dedication and quality of work. Just before the onset of her final illness, Mrs. Singer endowed an annual prize for sustained excellence in teaching at Harvard Medical School named after herself and her late husband, Ernest Singer, to whom she was married for over 60 years.
Mrs. Singer is survived by her children: David Allen Singer of Brookline and Judith Singer Swartz and son-in-law Barry Russell Swartz of Marietta, GA, and grandchildren Shoshanah Leah Swartz of New York City and Rachel Swartz Charles and her husband Daniel Abraham Charles of Washington, DC. The family gathered this past Friday evening for the last of Mrs. Singer’s Shabbat dinners, which were widely appreciated in the Brookline Jewish community. The funeral service will be held Sunday at 10:30 a.m. at Congregation Kehillath Israel, 384 Harvard St., Brookline, where she was active for two decades and served as president in the early 1990s.
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