Notes from the Old Noank Jail: Betty Brustolon remembered
Betty Brustolon died on Sept. 19, a few months after her husband, Gene. Her funeral was Sept. 27 at Noank Baptist Church, with burial at Noank Valley Cemetery.
From personal experience, I can attest to the fact that it is very difficult to deal with the death of two family members within a matter of months. Gene and Betty’s son Carl has performed very well in handling the family details. His actions remind me of his parents, as Gene was a strong-willed man and Betty was an equally determined woman with precision attention to details, especially numbers.
I met Betty back in the late 1970s and 1980s through the church after I got roped into working with some of the teenagers during Sunday School and various outings in the church van. At that point, Betty had been a long-time employee as a head teller at the local Connecticut Bank in Mystic, before it became Shawmut and then finally Bank of America.
Betty served as financial secretary for Noank Baptist and, although very good-natured, she was perhaps the strictest person I ever met for accuracy involving the numbers.
Legend was that on more than one occasion she cheerfully stayed up half the night to find an arithmetic error in a budget that was only off by a few cents ... and always found the error!
Betty was equally diligent when she served as membership chairperson for the Noank Historical Society, overseeing the membership mail-outs and collection of dues. The benefit for the NHS was an efficient management of finances which contributed to a gradual increase of membership and greater reserves for building projects.
Where Betty was able to find the time to work and spend time on these and other community projects, such as Avery Memorial and Noank School PTO, I will never know. But her spirit definitely rubbed off on Carl, who has carried on serving as a firefighter/EMT for Noank, helping with many church projects, running a part time small-engine repair business and working a full-time maintenance related job for Conn College.
When I think of Betty, I think of good-humored, unselfish determination, which lives on.
Ed Johnson lives in Noank.
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