Betty Rhodes

Dec. 13, 1927 -- Jan. 9, 2024

NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — Betty Ruth Vaughn was born in Taft, California, in 1927 to Charles and Harriet Vaughn. Soon after her birth her family moved to Ventura County, where she lived for most of her life. After graduating from Fairfax High in Los Angeles, she attended Los Angeles City College and then returned to Ventura to attend Ventura Junior College.

Betty Rhodes receives an award from U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson for her work in the community advocating for senior citizens — Submitted Photo

She met and married Thomas Rhodes in 1951 and reared four children. When the young family moved to Camarillo into their newly built dream home, Tom and Betty took up the game of golf. They enjoyed many years of the game with their close group of friends. Betty was involved in volunteer work most of her adult life.

She was an active member of Assistance League of Ventura County, a philanthropic group. The couple relocated to Napa in 1988 to be closer to family.

Tom passed away in 1990, and Betty continued her volunteer work in her new community, initially through Napa Visitors Center. She was 63 years old when she began her journey into senior advocacy. She was appointed to the Napa County Commission on Aging.

Continuing her advocacy work, she served on the board of directors of the Napa/Solano Area Agency on Aging. Betty also supported seniors at the state level as part of the California Senior Leadership Alliance, whose members advocated for seniors with legislators at the state capital.

She worked on the Napa County District Attorney’s Elder Abuse Planning and Prevention Council. She may be best known for the Napa County Caregiving Ordinance, California’s first background-check mandate for caregivers to senior residents that took effect in 2011. Due to her diligence as part of a group she called the Dream Team, this ordinance became known locally as “Betty’s Law.”

More recently, she also represented the interests of Napa County seniors on the Paratransit Council through the Napa County Transportation Commission. She was delighted to serve on the Board of Molly’s Angels, which provides transportation and support services to seniors in Napa. For her tireless efforts, Betty has been honored by the Napa Valley Chamber of Commerce as Community Booster of the Year in 2008. 

The Napa Board of Supervisors read a proclamation in 2016 celebrating her efforts titled, “Betty Rhodes — Bathed in Hope.” Bill Dodd presented her with another proclamation from the California State Assembly that year extolling her long and distinguished record of leadership and applauding her public achievements. Most recently, in 2022, U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson awarded Betty with Napa County Woman of the Year.

For nearly 20 years, Betty wrote “Life With Joy” and “Senior Corner” for Napa Valley residents regarding issues she hoped would interest seniors. Her main message was often centered around remaining physically and mentally healthy as we grow older. In one of her earlier articles she said that she didn’t mind getting older, she just didn’t want to BE old.

“As long as you are just ‘getting older’ you are still vital. Stay engaged in activities that are beneficial to others. Find ways to give back to others. Be helpful and help as long as you are able,” she wrote.

She was always young at heart. At the age of 80 she was accepted into Leadership Napa Valley, which she enjoyed immensely. She had a gift for turning a conversation to focus solely on the other person and make them feel good about themselves. Betty lived her entire life with a great love and caring of others, and her enthusiasm and encouragement for others will be forever missed.

Betty passed away peacefully at Queen of the Valley Hospital on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, at the wonderful age of 96. She was attended by her devoted family. She is survived by her children, Greg (Denise) Rhodes, Susan (Rex) Fuller, Steve (Della) Rhodes, and Judy (Mark) Schindler, eight grandchildren, 14 great grandchildren, 2 great-great grandchildren. She is also survived by her brother Norm (Sue) Vaughn and his two sons.

A memorial will be held at the Napa Senior Center on Sunday, Feb. 25, at 2 p.m. The family has requested that Molly’s Angels be the preferred recipient of any thoughtful donations in her honor.

Betty Rhodes: ode to a joyful woman

By Sasha Paulsen

NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — Betty Rhodes, Napa Valley’s ardent defender of senior citizens and the right to age with dignity, died on Jan. 9, 2024. She was 96.

This sounds like the beginning of a standard obituary, but what I really want to do is to share my own tribute to a woman I worked with for many years and admired profoundly.

I first met Betty not long after I started working at the Napa Valley Register in 1999. That was when Doug Ernst, then editor at the Register, dropped by my desk to say he had met a lady whom he though could contribute to my features section. A community activist, especially for senior citizens, she had been writing pieces for other publications, and he was impressed.

So began Senior Corner, which she wrote for me until I left the Register last year. Now that I think of it, Betty, in her 70s at the time, was a mere youth. She plunged into the world of journalism with the gusto of a cub reporter, always making her deadline and learning to navigate the often-mysterious ways of the Fourth Estate.

Her column became a platform to share her ideas on the fate that we all face: We are going to get old. While some things may be beyond our control, we still can make choices to live as vibrantly as possible. Her work was broad in scope. She was zealous in her determination to create protection for vulnerable elderly residents of the valley. She was also a firm believer in aging with grace, of making the most of all the time we are given.

I had not been editing her columns for very long when I told her that each time I read a new one, I decided that growing old was not such a bad thing after all. Challenging, yes, but without joy, no.

One week she might write about scams seniors should look out for, and the next she would launch a multipart series on how to meditate, working with mediation master Jim Koelker.

Sometimes she would admit to being a little blue, and then she would describe the ways she found to bring herself around. She wrote about journaling, jazz, and the joy of being with her friends and family.

“I didn’t know her that well,” journalist Tim Carl said. “We just meditated together. But what always struck me about her was her wish to share – and this is what she did with her writing.”

Indeed, this led Betty and me into some early journalistic adventures. I remember the time I read a column from her that was filled with good medical advice. I sent her a note, “Just wondering: Is there a source for this information?”

“Oh, yes,” she replied promptly. “It was an article I read while I was waiting in my doctor’s office, and it was so good I just wanted to share it.”

“Oh, yikes,” I said. “The thing is, we can’t really just copy good articles.”

“Oh, that is too bad!” she replied. “It has such good ideas.”

She mastered the art of quoting and attribution. But every once in a while I’d perceive a deviation from her usual warm, friendly voice to a more authoritative one.

I would have to ask: “Did you find another good article in the doctor’s office?”

“Oh, dear, I forgot,” she would reply. “Aren’t I lucky to have such a good editor!”

Along the way we became friends. She would invite me over to chat in her Napa condo. “I have wine,” she would say, “but I know you often like coffee better if you are on a deadline.” We would have our coffee and wine and chat, not about work but our lives and our families.

 I learned that she had moved to Napa in 1989 with her husband, Tom, who had passed away but with whom she had enjoyed a wonderful life. She was immensely proud of her children — Judy, Greg, Susan and Steven — and of her eight grandchildren, 14 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren, but she was also interested in the exploits of my two children. “Aren’t we just so lucky?” she would say

She was interested in everything, from the birds that visited her garden to the power of politics and people in that world to make life better for everyone, especially those without as much power. “I wonder,” I remember her writing to me one time, “would you mind if I write a little endorsement of (state) Sen. Bill Dodd?” Dodd, her former son-in-law, was a politician she especially admired for his work to protect seniors.

We had to compromise here, since writing endorsements generally falls to the editorial board of a newspaper. But we agreed she could write her glowing praise of Dodd’s work.

Here is another of my favorite conversations with Betty: I was telling her about my new project to cover the weeds in my backyard with sheets of cardboard, as the Master Gardeners said to do, but I wasn’t sure it would work since the weeds were somewhat high.

“Well,” Betty said, “what if I come over and help you jump up and down on the cardboard?”

Most of all, she was the best example of her own philosophy, of living with gratitude, of aging with grace. Even as she entered her 90s, she met inevitable changes with courage. And she shared them with her readers: making the decision to give up driving, moving from her multilevel condo to a cozy apartment in senior living.

When I visited her in her new home, she was still upbeat about all the positive elements of her new life, especially the kindness of people around her. Her space was smaller, but she had made it her own, and she had her computer set up to continue writing.

“I am so lucky to have these beautiful trees outside my window,” she said. “And I have your coffee ready for you.”

Hearing that she had died so suddenly after the holidays, I was first tempted to write that a bright star had gone out or maybe that a candle had been extinguished, but these are clichés that a writer such as Betty would despise. And the light never goes out when you leave a legacy of writing that shared a joyful life.

Betty received countless well-deserved tributes and honors in her life, and her daughter, Judy Schindler, tells me there will be one more opportunity to honor her memory on Sunday, Feb. 25, at 2 p.m at the Napa Senior Center.

“We thought that this would be the appropriate place,” she said.

Sasha Paulsen is a Napa Valley-based novelist and journalist.