Elizabeth Lord Bonsal's Obituary
Elizabeth Lord Bonsal
Elizabeth (Betty) Lord Bonsal died peacefully on August 22, 2024, at the age of 90. The daughter of Iverson and William (Willie) Christie Lord, she was born on November 19, 1933, and initially raised in Pooler, GA before her family moved to Savannah, where she graduated from Savannah High School, class of 1950, and Armstrong College, class of 1952. In 1958, she moved to Greenwich Village in New York City, where she met Stephen Bonsal. They married in 1960 and lived in Stuyvesant Town with their growing family before moving to Riverside, Connecticut in 1966. She and Steve remained in Riverside until they moved to Lewes, Delaware in early 2020.
Betty was politically active in Democratic Party politics in Greenwich, working diligently to get candidates elected as selectmen. She served as chair of the Greenwich Democratic Town Committee from 2001 to 2003. Both political allies and rivals would appreciate, sometimes begrudgingly, her outspokenness about political matters of importance to her. In the 2000s, she began serving as a justice of the peace for Greenwich, and she valued having officiated many weddings for gay as well as heterosexual couples following the legalization of gay marriage in Connecticut. In 2016, she officiated the wedding of her daughter Liz and daughter-in-law Tracy, marking her 246th gay marriage.
Betty was an avid tennis and paddle tennis player at Innis Arden. She treasured the times she spent with family on Squam Lake for summer vacations starting in the 1970s. The love of classical music that she and Steve shared led them frequently to performances at the Metropolitan Opera and, in the summer, to the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, NY. They also pursued their love of music, the arts, and time spent with friends in New York at the Century Club and in Greenwich at the Greenwich Symphony. For 40 years, they were members of a community play group known as Turkey-of-the-Month Club, giving memorable acting performances and enthusiastically staging their own living room productions. With her family, Betty regularly attended the First Congregational Church of Greenwich, for which she also served as a deacon and volunteered one day a week to work at the Rummage Room on Sound Beach Ave.
Talented, hilarious, and loving, Betty was dearly loved in turn by family and friends. She was predeceased by her husband Stephen, her son Stephen, and her brother Iverson Lord. She is survived by her sister Caroline Wilson and twin brother William (Billy) Lord, as well as by her daughter Elizabeth (Liz) Bonsal and her wife Tracy Toscano of Lewes, DE; son Dudley Bonsal of Harrisonburg, VA; daughter Virginia (Jenn) Nickell and her husband Jeffrey Nickell of Fairfield, CT, and their children Elizabeth (Ellie) and John (Jack).
A memorial for Betty and her husband Stephen, who died on July 14, 2022, will be held at the First Congregational Church of Greenwich, on Wednesday, October 16 at 3:00 PM.
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