Betty Miriam Adelson

CBE mourns Betty Miriam Adelson, wife of Saul Adelson, mother of David Adelson and Anna Adelson, mother-in-law of Lynn Harris and Tiffany Watson, grandmother of Bee Adelson and Sam Harris.

Betty Miriam Meyrowitz was born on June 19, 1935 in East New York/Brownsville, Brooklyn. From 9 years old she rode the IRT by herself to the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, where she took out the maximum allowed 10 books per week. She went to Dodger games with her father and memorized all the players’ stats. She skipped two grades, graduated Thomas Jefferson High School at age 16, and, after a year on kibbutz with the HaShomer HaTzair Zionist Socialist youth movement, attended Brooklyn College.

An English professor mentor guided her to a master’s degree in American literature at the University of Minnesota, where she led a Passover seder for a residential house full of Minnesota Lutheran women with the box of Maxwell House haggadahs her mother shipped to her.

She returned to Brooklyn College and taught English there for several years. She then became a college counselor at Queens College while working toward a PhD in counseling psychology at NYU.

She met Saul Adelson through mutual HaShomer HaTzair friends and married him after only a brief courtship in 1966. They had David in 1970 and Anna in 1974, stopping to drop off Betty’s completed dissertation at the typist on the way to Anna’s delivery. Betty then went into private practice as a psychotherapist, seeing a diverse patient clientele.

Anna was born with achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism. Frustrated with the lack of good, accessible information about dwarfs and dwarfism, Betty dedicated herself to helping other new parents of children with the condition. Her determination became a mission and led her to a many years-long and consuming project of writing the books the world needed. She published the exhaustive cultural history, “The Lives of Dwarfs: Their Journey from Public Curiosity toward Social Liberation,” in 2005, and a second book, “Dwarfism: Medical and Psychological Aspects of Profound Short Stature,” in 2007.

Through her effort she became the world’s foremost expert on dwarfs and dwarfism. Her motivation was primarily political. She believed that a community could not own its identity and fight for equal rights until it knew its own story.

Betty was optimistic to a fault, reflexively empathetic, and quick to laugh at her mistakes. She spoke elevated, literary English in daily life. Friends, acquaintances, and taxi drivers unburdened themselves to her. She extended herself to care for those in need. Anna’s and David’s friends loved her. She delivered spontaneous speeches about the wonder of people and things around her. She was interested in her children as people.

Betty was a loving and energetic mother and grandmother, a dedicated and appreciative wife, and a beloved companion and confidante to a wide array of friends. Her decline with Alzheimer’s over more than a decade was an agonizing conclusion to a full and good life. Her family is grateful that she is now, finally, at peace.

A funeral will be held at CBE on Friday, November 18th, at 11am. Shiva to take place at 439 6th St. on Sunday, Nov. 20th, Monday, Nov. 21, and Tuesday, Nov. 22 from 4:30-7:30pm, with a ma’ariv minyan at 6:30pm each day.

Shiva on Zoom: November 20, 2 pm: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2620457873

Donations in her memory can be made to Little People of America, the Brooklyn Public Library, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden