A Garden Tea Party, sponsored by Synergy in Action, honoring Betsy Milstein was held Tuesday, Aug. 23 at the home of Mary Summerford of Tryon. After gracing the community with her smile and lively step for forty years, Milstein is returning to her native England to enjoy life with her son and daughter, their spouses and her four grandchildren and ten great grandchildren.
Milstein spent the first 15 years of her life in England. In 1939, when World War II broke out, her father evacuated Milstein, her brother and their mother to live in Landrum with her grandparents, Dr. Edward Earle Bomar and Nannie Earle Landrum, daughter of Baptist minister Rev. John Gill Landrum, for whom the town of Landrum was named in 1880.
In 1941, while attending Converse College, she met Malcom Milstein, a former neighbor and officer in the British Royal Navy, who had come to New York for repairs on his torpedo ship. They were married in Washington, D.C. on Christmas Eve of the same year. In 1942, she returned to England where she lived until the death of her husband in 1972. Following his death, she returned to Landrum to care for her ailing mother, Libby Gilmore. After the passing of her mother, Milstein decided to make Landrum her home.
Milstein is well-known as a Christian woman who is committed to prayer. She has been seen many, many days walking the streets of Landrum praying the blessings of God over its government, churches, schools and businesses.
Synergy in Action, a local agency that provides residential services for developmentally disabled children and adults as well as for adults with mental health diagnoses, is one of the many local businesses that has been affected by Milstein’s prayer life.
Kathy Wofford Romich, executive administrator of Synergy in Action, says that she “greatly appreciates Milstein’s support for the clients and staff over the years. Although she will be many miles away, we know she will continue to affect our lives because, as Milstein says, ‘There is no distance in prayer, dahling.’”
– article submitted by Kathy Romich