Laura Elizabeth (Fortescue) Doyle

Laura Elizabeth Fortescue Doyle, (“Betty Doyle”), passed away on June 6, 2019, at the Masonic Village at Sewickley. Betty was born May 6, 1929, in East Orange, New Jersey, to the late Clarence Brockliss Fortescue and Laura Rachel Meeteer Fortescue.

Betty attended West Orange High School in West Orange, New Jersey, and graduated in 1947. She attended Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont, and graduated with a B.A. in Political Science in 1951. After graduation, Betty worked for the American Lithographer Company in New York City.

  Betty met Dr. Alfred P. Doyle (Al) on the beach in Sea Girt, New Jersey, in 1948. They were married at her home in Sea Girt on June 12, 1954. After her first child was born, Betty stayed home to raise one girl, three boys, two cats and three dogs while actively serving in the Union Aid Society, on the Board of Sewickley Academy, and in the Child Health Association. Betty was an avid bridge player and a skier, tennis player, and golfer. She traveled the world with her sister, her husband, and her children. Her house was home to the children of the neighborhood, and she dispensed sage advice and life lessons from her kitchen table. Her no-nonsense attitude was famous. Betty deftly made life easier for everyone around her. Al once joked that he was able to get medical work done only because he had a marvelous machine at home that dealt with bills and bankers, taxes and teachers, plumbers and painters, electricians and estimators, when not mowing about two acres of lawn on the tractor or climbing a ladder to clean leaves out of the gutter. The machine- Betty!

Betty conveyed that spirit of ability to do anything to her children, who survive her, the Honorable Elizabeth A. Doyle of Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, (Edward Horne), Dr. James E. Doyle of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Dr. Peter C. Doyle, Major, Army National Guard, of Sherborn, Massachusetts (Heidi Doyle), and Dr. Thomas A. Doyle of Sewickley, Pennsylvania, (Melissa Doyle), and to her fourteen grandchildren. She is sadly missed by her loving husband Al Doyle, of the Masonic Village of Sewickley, who had sixty-four wonderful years with the love of his life.

Betty was preceded in death by her father and mother, her older brother, Herbert Meeteer Fortescue, who died serving his country at the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, and her younger sister, Margaret Ann (“Peg”) Bondurant of Davidson, North Carolina.

A celebration of Betty’s life will be held in the Assembly Room of the Star Points Building at the Masonic Village of Sewickley on July 13, 2019, at 2 PM. Interment will be private in Sewickley Cemetery. Donations in lieu of flowers could be made in Betty’s memory to the Sewickley Cemetery. Arrangements by Copeland’s.

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