Betty Jane (Miller) Loeb

Betty Jane (Miller) Loeb, a southerner who married after World War II, moved north and raised a family in New England, died on Jan. 3, 2022. She was 92.

Betty Jane was born in Stephens, Arkansas, in 1929 five months before the great stock market crash. She grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, the middle of three daughters born to Bessie and H.V. Miller, who owned a grocery store. 

Possessed of a rebellious streak, Betty Jane went off to college at the University of Texas Austin and majored in Spanish. There she met David Frederick Loeb of Philadelphia, who served in the Pacific during the war and, upon his release from the Army, majored in English at Texas and graduated summa cum laude. 

They married in 1949 and moved North, where David began teaching at New York University and Rutgers. Betty Jane and David’s first child, Julia Bess, was born in East Orange, New Jersey, in 1953. Their second child, Vernon Frederick, was born three years later in Akron, Ohio, where David had taken a position at Goodyear.

He went on to work at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York, Itek Corp. in Lexington, Massachusetts and United Technologies in Hartford, Connecticut, before venturing into the hotel and restaurant business in Stamford, Greenwich, Cheshire and New London. He died in 1993.

Their children both graduated from Greenwich High School. Julia L. Aurigemma, a graduate of Cornell and the University of Connecticut School of Law, became a Superior Court judge in Connecticut and continues to serve on the bench as a senior judge in New Britain. She and her husband, Andrew Aurigemma, live in Cromwell. Vernon, a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, went on to a career in newspapers at The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and the Houston Chronicle and currently serves as executive editor of Inside Climate News, a nonprofit digital news organization. He married Patricia Ford Loeb, a journalist who now serves as City Hall bureau chief at KYW News Radio in Philadelphia. 

Throughout her life, Betty Jane was a devoted wife and mother, an avid reader, and a woman of many interests, including cats, travel, tennis and philanthropy. 

Betty Jane is survived by her sister, Martha Binion of Dallas, Texas; both of her children, six grandchildren and two great grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in her name to the Connecticut Cat Connection in Windsor. To share memories or send condolences, please visit www.doolittlefuneralservice.com.

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