Betty Frances Newcomb

Betty Harman Newcomb passed away on January 13, 2013 from heart arrest, and after a long and heartbreaking struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. She was born, Betty Francis Harman, in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 23, 1926, to Isabel and Blaine Harman. Betty spent her formative years living in the city and at the 62-acre family farm in Elkridge, which her father purchased in 1903 on Ridge Road, fancying at the time that he was reclaiming a small part of the 5,000 acres Johannes Harman had purchased in 1756. The farm is now sandwiched between the BWI airport and I-295. When she was 10 years old, Betty suffered twin tragedies: the untimely death of her father from lung cancer and the loss by fire of the family home. She attended Elkridge High School from 1941 to 1944 and commenced higher education with a scholarship to Goucher College for Women. Eventually tiring of monastic life, she transferred to and received her B.A. from the University of Maryland in 1948. After graduation, she worked for a time at the Army’s first ENIAC installation at Aberdeen, Maryland Proving Ground where she met Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, inventor of COBOL, the first higher-level programming language. She married Robert Newcomb in 1949, and together they had three children: Blaine (b. 1951), Philip (b. 1953), and Murray (b. 1955). Bob and Betty lived in College Park, Maryland, from 1949 until 1952, when they moved to Bridgewater. There Bob taught English at Bridgewater College and Betty started a bridal shop in the family living room, which eventually expanded to outlets in three cities by the time the family left Bridgewater. In 1958, the family moved to Muncie, where Bob became a professor of English at Ball State University. Betty earned her M.A. in English from Ball State University in 1965 with a thesis on Jane Austen. She taught English at Southside High School in 1962 through 1964. In 1964, the family travelled throughout Europe where Bob taught several months in London while the three boys attended London Public school. During their yearlong stay abroad, the family visited the great capitals of Europe. Betty adored art and the visit including an eerie crossing into Eastern Berlin via Check Point Charlie to visit the Pergamon and Altes Museum. A dedicated Europhile, she began her love affair with Paris, London, Florence, and Rome during these travels, a love that took her back to Europe dozens of times on pilgrimages to her favorite cities and art galleries.

In 1965, the Newcombs returned to Muncie where Mrs. Newcomb taught freshman and sophomore English at Ball State University until being appointed as Director of Affirmative Action in 1973, a position she held until her retirement in 1987. Betty and Bob spent three decades as settled faculty and administrators at Ball State University. She frequented estate sales in Indiana and assembled an exquisite collection of 18th and 19th century American art and antiques.

Upon retirement, she and Bob returned to Baltimore in 1987, where they lived together until Bob’s death on February 1, 2012, from cancer. Betty continued living, as was her wish, in her own home until her death. Past president and prominent members of the Ten Hills Neighborhood Association, Bob and Betty were well known and much loved by their neighbors. In her final three years of life, Betty was afflicted by Aphasia, a tragic condition that starts with degeneration of the speech centers of the brain and eventually progressed to acute Alheimer’s Disease. During her illness she received care during the final 18 months of her life from a highly skilled and dedicated team of home health aides led by Rebecca Meise, a friend of 10 years.

Betty is survived by her three sons Blaine (61), Philip (59) and Murray (57) and three grandchildren, Nicolas (28), Arielle (23), and Ming Lee (21), all of whom she dearly loved.

Betty was an ardent feminist and staunch advocate for minority rights throughout her life. She commenced her activism as a board member of the League of Women Voters of Indiana in 1959; soon after the Muncie League was formed. She counts one of the milestones of her life as sharing a committee with Alice Stokes Paul, the famous feminist, suffragist and political strategist and author of the Equal Rights Amendment. Betty cofounded Indiana National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1970. As the NOW state coordinator, she helped found 13 chapters in other parts of the state. As a member of NOW’s national board, she co-chaired the national by-laws committee and was on the national conference planning committees in 1973 and 1974. As a member of the NOW international committee, she also helped found NOW chapters abroad. From 1970 to 1972, she organized and led a successful national caucus within the League of Women Voters to gain endorsement for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) from the LWV US and lead the leagues statewide effort Indiana state legislature passage of the ERA. Indiana became the 35th and final state to ratify the ERA but the amendment fell 3 states short of the total needed for its passage. In the early 1970s, she organized and taught with others the first women’s studies course at Ball State University and helped form the Indiana Women’s Political Caucus. In 1972, she initiated the formation of “Hoosiers for ERA” within the LWV and Indiana WPC and spoke around the state to lobby support for the ERA. At the same time, she served as Alice Paul’s NWP representative in Indiana.

In her greatest achievement for minority and women’s rights in 1973, shortly after her appointment as Affirmative Action Director for Ball State, Betty Newcomb founded the American Association for Affirmative Action (AAAA), an organization for directors of equal opportunity affirmative action programs that now numbers more than a thousand institutional members.

In the late 1960s, colleges and universities were scrambling to understand their obligations to develop affirmative action plans required by Executive Order 11246, issued in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson. Then in 1972, the President signed Title IX of the Education Amendments that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded programs and activities.

Seizing the day, Betty, working with Sue Fratkin who was then at the American Council on Education, and others, wrote to college presidents across the nation, inviting them to a meeting in Austin, Texas to discuss how to grapple with these mandates. The conference drew more than 600 education leaders. One of the important outcomes was the decision to form the AAAA as a vehicle through which EEO/AA professionals could hone their skills as well as influence the national equal rights agenda. The founders envisioned AAAA becoming the “go to” organization with expertise in establishing policies and practices to eliminate harassment and discrimination.

The AAAA was Betty’s most successful effort to provide equal opportunity for women and minorities. She saw the organization as a way to effect change through collaboration between the two groups most disadvantaged by discrimination in educational institutions. She said, “Minorities were then fighting women’s efforts for equal access until their common interests were both served by the AAAA. ” She served on the AAAA board for several years and also as President from 1978 to 1979. In addition, she wrote, edited and published most of the articles for the AAAA newsletter between 1973 and 1978. As author of the AAAA newsletter, she had a significant role in the early articulation and implementation of the Title 9 Policy in colleges and universities across the nation as well as a significant role in the implementation of sexual harassment policy in colleges and universities. These programs have largely eliminated inequality in university and college sports programs, spurred women and minority enrollment in colleges and universities throughout the United States, and greatly diminished the threat of sexual harassment and sexual exploitation in educational settings. While unselfishly promoting others to hold the AAAA presidency and other leadership positions, Betty kept tight control of the AAAA newsletter, because through the newsletter, she hoped to assure that the AAAA could achieve the vision and purpose she had in mind at its founding. In her retirement, Betty helped found the Veteran’s Feminists of America (VFA).

After retirement Betty remained active in the women’s movement. She was vice president of Veteran Feminists of America for several years, and she organized and ran two conferences about Title XI in 1998 for the VFA. In 2002, Betty conceived of and led the organization of a VFA colloquium in Baltimore. Entitled "Are We There Yet?" it commemorated the 30th anniversary of Title IX, which mandated women's equal rights in educational institutions.

Betty had very deep friendships among countless women within the women’s rights movement community. As a child I remember picking up the phone to answer calls from an elderly woman with a commanding voice and running as fast as I could to get my mother so that she and Ms. Paul could plan how to get the ERA passed. I never truly appreciated who I had been talking to until I saw the famous film: Iron Jawed Angels, starring Hillary Swank who portrayed Ms Paul.

In the final years before her dear friend Betty Friedan’s death in 2006, the two Bettys often visited art galleries together in Washington, D. C.