Celebration of the Life of Betsy Burr

Obituary —Betsy Blanchard Burr (1941-2025)

Betsy Blanchard Burr passed away on Thursday, February 27. She is survived by her husband Stefan and her daughter Jessica. She was the only child of Francis and Eleanor Blanchard.

Betsy was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in Berkeley, where she was exposed from an early age to exceptional people from academia and various other walks of life, as well as various nationalities, who gathered regularly at her parents’ home. She always dated her love of ideas, her intellectual adventuring, from the experience of those gatherings. She had a strong love for the culture of San Francisco, which she saw as diverse, community-oriented, creative and fun-loving. She brought that love with her when she and Stefan moved to Morris County, New Jersey, in 1966, after gaining a B.A. from Pomona College and a Master’s degree in English Literature from Cornell.

The couple…