Betsey Gage LaBreche, age 77, passed away May 16, 2025, in San Diego.  She had lived for several years with dementia and died peacefully at the end of a day spent with her husband of 51 years, George (“Joe”) LaBreche and her sons, Ben Abold-LaBreche and Chris Labreche.

Betsey was born on December 14, 1947, in Troy, New York, to Frances Irvine Gage and George Henry Gage.  Her mother was a first-generation college graduate and a school teacher.  Her father, just returned from the Battle of Okinawa, was a student at Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute.  Betsey’s first home was in a barrack that had been converted from wartime use to student housing amid the post-war surge of veteran students.  Her father remembered rocking Betsey’s cradle with his foot as he solved EE problem sets.  A fellow engineering student, upon viewing baby Betsey, pronounced her “adequate”.  He may have been summarily stricken from that year’s Christmas Card list.  Betsey would soon prove to be far more than adequate.

Betsey’s first dozen years were characteristic of many American children in the post-war period, moving among states several times before her family settled in the small New England town of Topsfield, just north of Boston.  As a teenager Betsey was of generally good deportment other than regularly attending, without benefit of an admission ticket, the annual Topsfield Fair, a regionally known attraction with a locally known hole in its security fence.  Summers she worked at a local horse stable and loved to ride.  Only later did she learn that, as the firstborn she might receive the most parental attention, but the last-born got the pony.  She graduated in 1965 from Masconomet Regional High School where she was a strong student and participated in activities that included choir and ski club.    She was an excellent math student.  Her father had hoped she would compete on the math team; Betsey, though, insisted on joining the cheerleading squad instead.

Betsey attended Simmons College, now Simmons University, in Boston where she earned a science degree and a license to practice physical therapy.  During college she traveled through New England, singing with the glee club and skiing on the narrow, icy slopes of New Hampshire, Vermont, and especially Sugarloaf Mountain in Kingfield, Maine.  Kingfield was at that time, a tiny, passed-over town notable mostly for its excellent ski mountain and its small high school marching band.  The band, lacking actual musical instruments, would parade through town on Independence Day playing patriotic music on individual transistor radios tuned to the local radio station.  During Spring of her freshman year she met her future husband Joe, a junior at MIT with big plans and small resources.  On an early date in what proved to be a seven-year, on-and-off courtship, they had to exit a taxi mid-trip when, due to slow traffic, the fare shown on the meter approached the cash in Joe’s pocket. Betsey never complained about what might have been an early economic indicator.  In her junior year, Betsey would occasionally go home to bake cookies for Joe who was in Vietnam.  One weekend her mother observed, “You know, if you keep sending him cookies, Joe is going to think you want to marry him when he comes home.”  By all accounts no more cookies were ever sent.

After graduating in January 1970, Betsey accepted a job at the Massachusetts Hospital School just south of Boston.  But first she spent the winter skiing at Sugarloaf.   She relished helping the Ski Patrol sweep the slopes at the end of the day, policing up casualties of the mountain’s notorious moguls.   At night she was the dinner hostess at the only tablecloth restaurant on the mountain.   Joe just happened to work nights in the restaurant’s kitchen.  Out of the Army and waiting for grad school to begin, Joe had come to Sugarloaf to learn to ski and needed help.  Betsey, possibly with misgivings about his suitability, agreed to be his instructor.   Betsey taught Joe to ski.  Joe learned to fall.  He fell on the slopes.  He fell in the lift lines.  And he fell for Betsey.  The courtship was back on.  It was three more years before Joe, who had an engagement ring in his coat pocket almost the entire time, asked Betsey to be his wife.  In 1973, they married in Topsfield and moved to Tallahassee, Florida where Joe was working.  Betsey immediately got a physical therapy position in a state institution for disabled children and then a similar, but more challenging, job at a Georgia hospital just across the state line.

In 1974, Betsey and Joe quit their jobs, put their belongings in storage, and drove their rotary engine Mazda around the US, visiting relatives, friends, and national parks, all the while scouting places they might consider for their next home.  One such place was Del Mar, California where college friends lived on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific.  After exploring the US for three months, Betsey and Joe left for a Grand Tour of Europe, a tour much like the fabled jaunts taken by monied aristocrats of yore, except without the money.  It was an emotionally wonderful, intellectually stimulating, and financially exhausting time together.  After six weeks in Europe Betsey confessed she could not bear to see one more masterpiece of Salome being presenting the severed head of John the Baptist.  Her confession allowed Joe to admit that while Arthur Frommer might enjoy Europe on $5 a day, he, Joe, was more of a $50 a day guy.  They decided it was time to return to the US and the working world.

In Boston for the holidays, Betsey and Joe narrowed their possible next home to Boston, Washington D.C., Houston, and San Diego.  Each had appeal.  A decision would be difficult.  Then on a cold, dreary January 2, 1975, The Boston Globe ran a photo of people walking into the San Diego Zoo on New Year’s Day, wearing shorts, slaps, and t-shirts!   Betsey and Joe looked at the photo, at the snow piled high outdoors, and then at each other.  Eureka. They would move to San Diego for five years and then, as responsible adults, they would return to the East Coast.  They packed the Mazda, tossed the windshield ice scraper in the trash bin, and headed west.

The five California years stretched to 50.  Betsey and Joe spent three years in Pacific Beach, then 47 around Solana Beach.  Betsey was a physical therapist at Scripps Clinic for the first three years, then children arrived, and Betsey choose to be a stay-at-home mom and homemaker.  She raised their sons with love, gentleness, and, as occasion demanded, patience.  She made great Halloween costumes ranging from Ben Franklin to Dan Quayle and from monsters to lobsters.  From the kitchen came New England cranberry bread, New Orleans shrimp gumbo, and San Diego fish tacos.  She baked world-class cookies, but only for domestic consumption.  Her gardens were crowded with vegetables.  Her fruit trees were thick with, well, leaves.  Later avocados would come, but never citrus.

Betsey was an accomplished quilter (and sewist and knitter more generally) and leaves behind many beautiful examples of her work.  She made dear friends in her several quilt groups over the decades.  She was a long-time member of two book clubs, where she distinguished herself by actually reading the chosen books.  She loved gardening and was co-creator of a pizza-garden at The San Diego Center for Children, teaching the kids to raise vegetables that became toppings on their pizzas. Betsey was an enthusiastic yogini, lamenting for years the closure of The Yoga Room in Encinitas.  She took up power walking, including a hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and, necessarily, back up to the rim.  She and Joe traveled both domestically and internationally.  On an especially beautiful vacation day in Hawaii Betsey phoned the babysitter back in Solana Beach, instructing her to “sell the house and send the kids”.  Then, remembering Hawaiian real estate prices and with an impish smile she corrected that to “sell the kids and send the house”.  The babysitter, fortunately, did neither.  Betsey was a constant supporter of the local schools, assisting in the classroom and serving as PTA Treasurer.  Joe remembers coming home one evening to find the kitchen table piled high with crumpled currency and well-worn coins from a school fund raiser. For a moment Joe knew how Clyde felt when he met Bonnie.  Then Betsey insisted on honest and thorough accounting to the PTA board.

Though she never sought the drama or the limelight, history sometime found Betsey.  She heard Martin Luther King Jr speak twice.  She shared an elevator in the summer of 1973 with Sam Ervin, Chairman of the Senate Watergate Investigating Committee.  What they discussed was not taped and has been lost to history.  On the sidewalk in front of the White House she walked pass Henry Kissinger.  Dr. Kissinger, known to have an eye for pretty women, glanced up and smiled at her.  Without much thought Betsey spontaneously called out, “I’m from Massachusetts too”, then walked on.  He looked nonplussed but pleased.

Betsey had friendships that spanned decades, and through her final illness she was often supported by those friends.  Even though she couldn’t articulate the words, her eyes and smile said thank you.  She also loved and was loved by her family.  In addition to Joe and their sons, Betsey is survived by siblings Jim Gage and Nancy Mandeville, sister-in-law Judy Gage, son-in-law Justin Abold-LaBreche, daughter-in-law Chrissie Bradley, grandchildren Bay, Marie, Lily and Cal, and wonderful relatives too numerous to list.

Betsey will be interred in San Diego at Miramar National Cemetery.  In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to The Elizabeth Hospice, San Diego.