Elizabeth Ann (LaFlame) Marciano passed away peacefully in her sleep in Woodstock, VT, on Saturday, February 29, 2020, bringing to a quiet end the earthly existence of a woman of seemingly boundless faith and energy.

Born in Athol, Massachusetts on November 23, 1932, to James Henry Carl LaFlame and Sadie Ruany (Goodwin) LaFlame, Betty was a musical, athletic, and charismatic child with curly jet-black hair. She won a silver cup from the Wilson Children's Radio Review for tap-dancing at the age of six, and although the family moved to Leominster just before her senior year of high school, she was nevertheless elected president of her class, played piccolo in the band, and was a three-season varsity athlete.

She became the first member of her family to enroll in college, attending State Teachers College at Fitchburg (now Fitchburg State University) until her graduation in 1954. In late 1956 in Newton, Massachusetts, where she was teaching elementary school, a mutual friend set her up on a blind date with Richard "Dick" Marciano, who grew up in nearby Belmont and was interested in finding a female companion who enjoyed skiing. Her roommate, exasperated by Betty's hesitance to go on a simple date, encouraged her with the words "You don't have to marry him, Betty," a line that would be used more than 50 years later in a song written to celebrate the couple's golden anniversary.

After honeymooning the Alps, they spent the first year of their married life living with Dick's mother in Belmont, where they also welcomed the arrival of the first of their five children, Robyn, in 1959. That year also saw them purchase an acre of land in west Andover, Massachusetts, and build a house a mile down the road from the fledgling St. Robert's Bellarmine Parish, a faith community that would be one of the pillars of their lives throughout their years in Andover and beyond. At St. Robert's, Betty sang in the choir, participated in the annual parish musical, was active in the Stroke and Striders outing club, and was even a willing supporter of her family's annual involvement in the theologically questionable "Spook Walk" at Halloween.

In 1970, after taking ten years off from teaching to concentrate on motherhood and family life, Betty began what would turn into 26 years of teaching at Sanborn Elementary School, mostly second grade, the deep bonds that she formed with her colleagues there becoming another pillar of the family's life in town.

It is difficult to imagine the stores of energy required to be a devoted wife, the loving mother to five children and to work full time, even occasionally being the sole breadwinner during the economic downturn of the early 1970s, which threw her husband's career into turmoil. But summers and weekends were hardly time for sitting still. When school was out for the summer, she would transform into "Marcy", the Girl Scout arts and crafts counselor at Camp Kiwanis in Tyngsborough, or pack the family up for weekends of camping or hiking.

In the late 1970s, as middle age approached, Betty and Dick became involved in World Wide Marriage Encounter, a faith-based organization that runs weekend retreats to reinforce the communication skills that form the basis of healthy marriages. Soon they would begin giving talks at the weekends, and then this evolved into giving talks to not-yet married couples through Engaged Encounter, which they would do for the next twenty years.

At the age of 50, she took up golf so that she and Dick would have a hobby in common as their retirement became more imaginable. They began spending February school vacations at Hilton Head Island in South Carolina and slowly developed a taste for the Snow Bird life. Upon retirement in 1997, they sold the Andover homestead to their youngest son, spent the summers at their new home in Standish, Maine, and winters in the golfing community in Lecanto, Florida, where Betty soon forged the same kinds of deep friendships with special people that she had a knack for finding throughout her life, and it was this group of friends who supported her after Dick's sudden passing in 2010.

Betty was always a pillar of strength and struggled with the idea of being a burden on anyone. As she began to slow down physically, she decided to move back north so as not to burden her Florida friends. Her eldest daughter Robyn and her husband Karl welcomed her into their home in Woodstock, VT. Re-adapting to New England winters was a challenge, but she soon built a core of friends through a Bible study group and through the local senior center.

During the last few years of her life, she would usually end conversations with her children with this: "If anything happens to me before we see each other again, don't be sad. I've lived a blessed life."

She was predeceased by her husband and is survived by five children, their spouses, eleven grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren, including Robyn Huck and her husband Karl, of Woodstock, VT, Richard and his wife Nancy of Buxton, ME, Jay and his wife Liane of Amherst, NH and Bonn, Germany, John and his wife Allison, of Andover, MA, and Elizabeth Ross and her husband Jonathan of Standish, ME, her brother H. James LaFlame and his wife Charlotte, Swansea, MA, as well as eleven grandchildren, four great grandchildren, several cousins, nephews and nieces, and many, many loving friends.

Services will be held at 1 PM on Saturday, 14 March 2020, at the First Congregational Church of Woodstock, Vermont, with a reception immediately following in the church's fellowship hall.