from staff
‘The more I do, the more I find needs to be done’
Betsy Ross Lovett is a Jacksonville native and prolific philanthropist who has funded medical, cultural and educational projects, among other causes.
Her extensive support includes the Betsy Lovett Arts Center at The Bolles School Bartram Campus, the Betsy Lovett Surgery Center at St. Vincent’s Medical Center and the Betsy Lovett Courtyard at the Main Library. She chaired the Jacksonville Public Library Foundation from 2007-2010.
Her list of awards is equally extensive, including the 2010 Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville Individual Hall of Fame Award, only the second ever given.
Born in 1930, she married industrialist William Dow Lovett in 1950. After he died, she initiated the William Dow Lovett Laboratory of Molecular Neurogenetics at the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
Betsy Lovett has two daughters and seven grandchildren. She is as comfortable in New York and European society as she is hunting big game and fly fishing.
Lovett met with the editorial staff of the Daily Record at her home on Tuesday.
How did you get started in philanthropy?
I don’t really know how I got started. I was about 12 years old in 1942. We didn’t have television, we sat by the radio to listen to the news. We didn’t have the enormous diversions that young people have today. We played cards. We had ‘Victory Gardens.’ My grandmother lived with us and she taught us to knit and crochet.
We knitted what was called ‘Bundles for Britain.’ We knitted eight-inch squares that were made into quilts for the service people. We turned it into a contest to see who could out-knit everyone else. We rolled bandages. I think that’s what got me started.
Also during the war, we got stamps for shoes. We got two pairs of shoes a year. We had good shoes and school shoes. Both of them by the end of the year looked pretty horrible. I remember sometimes we would give away our shoe stamps (to other families with children) and linger on with our old shoes. I think it was instilled in me to do for others. If somebody needed help, we helped.
I have always loved people. I don’t care who they are or where they are.
I don’t give to receive. I give to know that others are helped. It’s a constant reaping of joy to know that I may have helped somewhere.
You support a lot of causes related to health care. Why?
I really feel that I’m on this earth because of St. Vincent’s Hospital. When I was nine I was very ill – had been for a couple of weeks. Fortunately my baby doctor, which is what they called them back then, was a major Harvard research man along with being a baby doctor. Sadly, a little boy was put in there with spinal meningitis just a few weeks before I went in and the doctor ordered from Philadelphia a drug called sulfanilamide. This was before penicillin and before antibiotics. I was critically ill the Sunday of my birthday. They operated on me and I had pneumococcus, peritonitis and a ruptured appendix. The little boy had died the night before I was there so they immediately started me on the sulfanilamide and gave me an hour to live, but I survived. I remember a fireman came in and they put a cot next to me and they did an arm-to-arm transfusion. It’s in the records as one of the first cases of that proportion.
I was born at St. Vincent’s, too, so all my life I wanted to do something. That’s why I put my name on the surgery and research center because that’s what saved my life.
My mother always said I must have been left on this earth for something good.
You are such a strong supporter of so many institutions and causes. How do you choose?
It’s very difficult. I go through sessions of agonizing because there is so much I want to do and the more I do, the more I find needs to be done.
I hate to tell people ‘no’ when they come to you with such enthusiasm. That’s what I do when I’m soliciting money. I put my soul into it because I’m really serious. I want to do something for the library or the hospital or whatever I’m doing. I realize other people’s causes when they come to me are equally important. That’s the hardest part of turning someone down, but you’ll be out shaking your own cup if you don’t sometimes.
Where would you like to see more community focus?
I have always thought the greatest thing we have and can have is education. Without that, jobs are not as available. Education, reading and the arts are soul-supporting. People who are more exposed to those things are less likely to be involved in other (nonproductive) things.
What concerns me is when parents are not involved. It’s the attention and support they can give. So many parents are not at home and so many children are left. They need so much support.
Reducing funding for the Jacksonville Public Library has been identified as a way to help balance the City’s budget. What’s your comment?
A lot of people don’t realize the library has a board of trustees who are appointed by the mayor, so they’re in a political position where they’re not allowed to raise money. On the other hand, the library foundation is not appointed. We elect our new members and we are the ones who raise the money to supplement what the City doesn’t give the library. The City couldn’t give the library everything it needs anyway. The City doesn’t have the money.
But what good are 20 hours a week at a library in a satellite area? A lot of times there’s no way people can get there when the library is open. I really don’t know what’s going to happen.
What impresses you?
One of the things that has impressed me all my life is the support that comes with everything I’ve ever done. When I received the Lifetime Achievement EVE Award (from The Florida Times-Union), I said that everybody in that audience deserved it. I was only the recipient of it for them. There is nothing in life that you can do without a support system.
What has made you continue to be so involved in the community?
I feel that this community is extraordinary. I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, but I have traveled extensively. I’ve been all over South America and Africa and Europe. I’ve met so many royals and been to birthday parties at Kensington Palace. I’ve been blessed. Everywhere I’ve been, I still come back to Jacksonville and find that it is the most beautiful, joyous, wonderful spot. It’s the river, it’s the people. it’s the size. We have troubles – every place does - but I think we’re very fortunate to have what we have here in Jacksonville. I hope people realize it.
You’re best known for supporting education and the arts, but 20 years ago you took on an environmental cause. Tell us about that.
That’s one of the most important things I ever did in my life. About four miles west of Madison (Florida), we owned a farm in a beautiful, pristine area. Amoco had a subsidiary called Waste-Tech and they threatened the town leaders into selling 800 acres to put up the largest hazardous waste incinerator in the Southeast. That made me so mad I couldn’t stand it. I could not bear to see that area destroyed, so I hired lawyers and formed a group.
The brother of the guy who owned the newspaper was opposed to it. I got the head of the real estate group. They were ready to mobilize because they were concerned. They already had a little tiny thing they called ‘Save Our County.’ They’d raise funds by auctioning an old truck or a pig – that’s the way they do things in the country.
I got them all together and I told them what my project was and then I told them, ‘If you’re interested, I want you behind me. But I want you to know first, I never enter a project unless I expect to win, particularly this one, and I’ll fight it with all I’ve got.’
I worked with (then Florida Gov.) Lawton Chiles and the EPA in Washington. We solicited everybody. We’d have meetings at the little county courthouse and people would just pour out to hear what we had to say. I told them one person cannot do this. Tallahassee is not for one person. It’s groups and crowds and support. So they mobilized and went in droves to Tallahassee.
I was threatened that I better watch where I went hunting on my place. People were opening their mailboxes and finding rattlesnakes. It was a horrible time, but it was a fighting time.
I brought in scientists and we went to Gainesville and did a study. I still have the books.
The thing that killed it was there are sinkholes all over Madison County and it’s over the Florida aquifer. Amoco promised the incinerated stuff would be buried in concrete casings, but they made the mistake that those casings only last 30 years. Eventually, it would have contaminated the whole aquifer and it would have been a cleanup nobody could afford.
We beat them because we worked. The greatest joy was when I got this wonderful letter from Amoco saying Waste-Tech had backed down. Then they had to sell the land and we bought it.
Tell us about the farm.
It’s the place where I nurture my soul. I go out hunting before dawn and I sit in a little blind, three feet high. I go by myself and sit there an hour alone. Nobody knows how beautiful the world is when you’re there and hear the sounds of nature coming alive. You hear the owl hoot and the turkey gobble. It’s unbelievable and so peaceful.
I remember being at a dinner and the dean of the cathedral Downtown was sitting next to me. He asked me where I went to church. I thought ‘uh-oh – I may be getting in a situation I don’t want’ (laughs). I said I really go to church in my country place. My church is over there. He asked me what I meant so I described it.
I told him about the glow and the beauty when the sun comes up and the stars just fade away. In the winter when the frost is on the ground, the spider webs look like lace necklaces or lace doilies. There’s just so much to feast your eyes on. He was so cute, he said, ‘Betsy, will you take me to your church in the country one weekend?’
Your husband died in 1990. Tell us about him.
Billy was remarkable. He was older and we grew up knowing each other. Billy finished school and went on to the Merchant Marine Academy during the war and then shipped out. He got his B.S. in the academy but his father wanted him to go to Harvard, so when he came back (from the war), he went to Harvard Law School and graduated in three years. Then we were married in 1950. He was four years older, but I trapped him (laughs).
We bought a building Downtown, that big white one with green shutters next to the ball park. We lived off that because his daddy wanted him to go to law school. We went up to Cambridge (Mass.) for three years.
As soon as we came home, his daddy sent him to Havana, Cuba. His daddy was in the shipping business and all kinds of things. He started what was the beginning of the container load. He took some of his freighters and opened the bows and laid train tracks so the engine could push the cars in. He worked it out with (Cuban Dictator Fulgencio) Batista to build a place in Havana for the landing where a train could come and pull it all out. Billy ran that for three years.
It was a beautiful place. We used to go to Hemingway’s Floridita (bar). I couldn’t stay too much because Elizabeth was born. I’d go down there and stay with Billy at the (Hotel) Nacional and then come back to Jacksonville. Havana was a very glamorous town.
July 26, 1956, was the big revolution and they put me on a steamship and sent me home. Billy stayed for a few weeks but of course, they confiscated everything and there was nothing left.
Later, we were on a black list because Mr. Lovett sent his ships to anchor off Cuba and haul all those Cubans who wanted to come here.
After that he went to Ecuador, where he ran a 25,000-acre banana plantation.
He traveled extensively. That was when I devoted myself to my children and ran a lot of organizations during that time. It gave me something to do in the evenings.
Later, we owned the cruise lines out of Miami with six of the big ships that cruised the islands. The largest, I think, carried 600 passengers. We’d go on to see how the ships were being run and find out what the people wanted and needed. That was great fun.
In the meantime, we went to Canada every summer and went salmon fishing. We went to Spain and went partridge shooting on the king’s property.
Then he developed a condition similar to Lou Gehrig’s Disease, cerebellar ataxia, but he never missed a day of work. He got to where his speech was going two years before he died. But you can understand anybody when you’ve lived with them. They don’t have to talk.
Billy always had the craziest sense of humor. When he would tell a joke he could never get to the punch line because he would laugh so hard himself.
The week before he died, I had it rigged so I could put him in the dove field. I had the strap that would hold the gun and I held the barrel for him and he shot a dove. It was the week before he died. That was the only week he wasn’t dressed in a coat and tie when he went to the office.
As you support causes, you are known for the costumes you wear to fundraisers, including dressing as Dolly Parton. How did that come about?
In school I was Betsy Ross. I was ‘Miss Victory’ one year. We always had costume parties. It’s just fun.
The Cancer Society asks me to do something every year. One year I was ‘Annie Get Your Gun.’ I wasn’t going to dress like some old tired Annie. I plaited my hair and sat on top of the piano. Everything I do is always covered with lights.
Once I went as a western hussy with a lit garter and fancy lit shoes and great big hat. I planned a shoot-out with another person. ... (Sheriff) John Rutherford comes up and puts handcuffs on me. Then he put me in this little jail they had there. I looked over in the corner of the cell and there was an old toilet bowl filled with cracked ice and champagne for me. I love a glass of champagne. They auctioned me off and raised $5,000.
I remember one year my costume was ‘The Electric Horseman.’ The costume had 36 batteries, I was afraid to sweat. I thought I might be electrocuted.
Why not dress up and be silly if it can help an organization?
You care about the environment. What’s your opinion of the response to the Gulf oil spill and how do you think the country should respond?
I don’t know what we’re going to do and I don’t think Washington has come to the forefront. They’ve insulated the excitement to do something and get people to move forward.
I think we should have begged every country to come to our aid. We’ve helped other people and they could do what they can to help us.
You’ve said the world has changed so much during your life. What do you think made it change?
I worry that what we’ve seen on television for so long has been demoralizing. I think when you lower your standards, you lower your respect for things like integrity and fairness. I think people’s respect for other people is not what it used to be.