Beti Meiriona Bell, 93, of State College, died peacefully at home on October 25, 2024. She was a wife, a mother of three, grandmother of nine, a teacher, a sports woman and cyclist, a traveler, a consummate cook, an ardent reader, and more.
She was born on March 18, 1931, in Crewe, England. She was the daughter of William Owen Jones and Mary Price Jones, who had moved to Crewe from North Wales.
Beti graduated from Nantwich Grammar School in England in 1949 and from college in Leicester in 1951. She captained her school and college field hockey teams. She taught in secondary schools in Stoke, Oxford and Crewe, and later in Middlesbrough. On April 7, 1956, she married Ian Bell. Later that year, she and her husband crossed the Atlantic, sailing from Liverpool to Montreal and went by bus to Berkley, CA, where she worked in a bank in San Francisco. They returned to England and lived in Middlesbrough until the end of 1960, moving them to State College, PA.
In State College, she taught tennis and Scottish Country dancing. Besides looking after her family, she also volunteered at the Christian Mission and the Mount Nittany Hospital gift shop. She and her husband continued to travel and visited all of the states of the U.S. and some 40 countries. Following her husband’s retirement, she chose an apartment in Nantwich, England, where they had both attended the same school. For 20 years, they spent four months each year there, again travelling extensively in England and Wales and in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Not a day, or night, went by without Beti reading a book or doing a jigsaw puzzle. She had a remarkable memory for/of conversations with friends and of details of meals eaten years ago.
In addition to her husband, Beti is survived by three children, Michael John Bell and his wife Francesca Pauletto of Singapore, David Gareth Bell of State College, and Jacqueline Bell Anastos and her husband Phillip of Lock Haven; a brother Glyn F. Jones of Crewe, England and nine grandchildren, Peter, Alexis and Olivia of Lock Haven; Augustus, Georgina, Matilda, and Maximilian of London, England and Giulio and Marco of Singapore. She was preceded in death by her parents and sister, Mair Winfield.
She was a member of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church 208 W. Foster Ave. State College, PA 16801.
Online condolences and signing of the guest book may be entered at www.kochfuneralhome.com.
In lieu of flowers donations in her name can be sent to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in State College, PA.