Bettie W. Crow, who established a successful florist business with her husband and was also an artist, died Jan. 20 from respiratory failure at Gilchrist Hospice Center in Towson.
The Blakehurst Retirement Community resident was 98.
“Bettie was warm, caring and fun, lots of fun, and we had so many good times at her beach house every year,” said E. Lesley Pierce, a Blakehurst friend.
Bettie May Windsor, daughter of Edward Stuart Windsor, chairman of insurance company Riggs, Counselman, Michaels & Downes, and Elizabeth Quarnguesser Windsor, who managed the family home, was born in Baltimore and raised on Elkader Road in Ednor Gardens.
She was a graduate of Eastern High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in art in 1948 from the University of Maryland, where she was a member of Pi Beta Phi sorority.
Two weeks after departing College Park, she married Gordon A. Gaumnitz, a college classmate, at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, and the couple then opened Gordon Florist on St. Paul Street in Charles Village in 1949.
“Mom told the story about scrubbing the shop’s floor at night before the business opened, on her hands and knees,” said a daughter, Gail Goering, in the eulogy for her mother.
“It was a family venture. We all remember tying strings of bows while watching TV to prepare for the busy Mother’s Day corsage season. We all spent time working at Gordon’s Florist, with Page on the register, Holly running the outside sidewalk sales and me cleaning and watering flowers,” she said, referencing her sisters.
They expanded the business to include stores in the Northwood Shopping Center in Original Northwood, and at Cold Spring Lane and Loch Raven Boulevard.
After her husband’s death in 1975, she sold the business.
In 1976, she married John Crow, who worked in dairy sales for A.E. Kaestner Co. He died in 2012.
For years until moving to the Towson retirement community in 2012, Mrs. Crow lived in a home on East Melrose Avenue in Homeland.
Mrs. Crow continued into her 90s making large floral arrangements for the front lobby at Blakehurst.
She was an avid bridge and tennis player, and only took up the sport when she turned 50.
“She didn’t just play; she was good,” Ms. Goering explained in her eulogy. “Mom hand-painted tennis underdrawers for her entire group, with the name that they used to refer to themselves: The late Bloomers.”
Mrs. Crow and her first husband had purchased a second home in Bethany Beach, Delaware, where she enjoyed painting watercolors of beaches, palm trees and the ocean. She also worked in oils, and her artwork was displayed at the Woman’s Club of Roland Park, where she was a member.
During the coronavirus pandemic, when quarantined at Blakehurst, she did pastel drawings of her friends.
A confirmed teetotaler, family members said, she enjoyed parties and watching the Orioles, Ravens and Terps.
She was a member of Grace Methodist Church and the Baltimore Country Club for more than 50 years.
Services were held Jan. 25 at the Mitchell-Wiedefeld Funeral Home in Rodgers Forge.
Mrs. Crow is survived by three daughters, including Ms. Goering, of Sparks; Page Miller, of the Woodbrook neighborhood of Baltimore County; and Holly Adolph, of Timonium, six grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.