Betty Jane: A Story Worth Telling
Betty Jane Litchfield was born at Saint Anne's hospital in Chicago Illinois on November 19 of 1922. She lived to be nearly a century old. Her life was, in many ways, completely ordinary. She never did anything which became famous. She didn't star in a movie, she never published a book, and she never held a political office. She did not do the things we first tend to think of when we think of people whose lives are stories worth telling. Even to her. When I told her I was intending to write down her life story, she said, "What have I done? I shouldn't have done anything famous or anything exciting."
But I disagree. I think her life was made of a great many stories worth telling, not only because of the stories themselves which are charming and touching and everything that makes being human worth doing, but also because of how her life was connected to one of the most dramatic centuries in human history.
History is an opera, with heroes and villains, composed of leitmotifs, and using a wide range of very different instruments from one song to the next. Every generation adds a verse, and sometimes there is the return of a familiar melody, and sometimes the verses rhyme. It's been said that "No man is an Island," and the story of one girl born in 1922 is the story of the entire world - the libretto of all human history which has been sung since the beginning of time. Her verse is linked to a much larger score.
Just as one example, it is entirely possible that she would never have been born if Gavrilo Princip had not decided to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914.
It's a story worth telling.
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