Elizabeth Ann McKee was born on November 3, 1942—the first child of Elizabeth and Harold McKee of Cumberland, Rhode Island. Her parents called her Betty Ann.
A Royal Decree in 1746 established the town of Cumberland, in the northeast corner of the state. Its early industrial growth was spurred by the abundant water power of the Blackstone and Abbot Run Rivers.
Betty Ann grew up in the lush green rural outskirts of this town, off a dirt road, in a home that was more than a hundred years old. From the house, she could see the Convent of the Religious Sisters of Mercy, an order of teachers and nurses, high on the hill. Every day at noon, their bells rang out through the community and all paused for a moment of prayer. In this idyllic setting, only one incident marred Betty Ann’s early years: a serious bout of pneumonia that threatened to take her life.
By the time Betty Ann started her formal education at the Mercy Mount Country Day School, she had two sisters: Rosemary and Margaret. To Margaret, four years younger, BettyAnn was the object of endless hero worship. Margaret looked up to her big sister in awe, anxious to be old enough to do all that she could do.
It was a loving and very Catholic family. They all went to confession on Saturday and services on Sunday at St. John Vianney, their parish church. It was housed in a historic building on Old Boston Post Road. In a previous life, the structure served as a tavern where travelers stopped for refreshment on their way to Boston.
Easter was a special day in the McKee home. Before-hand, the family dressed in nice clothes, as many did for shopping in that era, and traveled to Woonsocket to buy new dresses, hats, gloves and shoes for the special day. When the big morning arrived, Elizabeth prepared them for the service one girl at a time, starting with her youngest, Margaret. She tied each head of hair with rags to create the long, fat sausage curls so popular on little ones at the time, and dressed them in their new outfits.
One Easter, she had groomed her two youngest girls to perfection and waited on Betty Ann to finish her bath in the tub. Rosemary, the middle child, came into the bathroom to see her older sister. Somehow, she managed to tumble head first into the soapy water. She emerged with a wet dress, a soggy hat and her former curls hanging like dishrags on her head. Mom did double duty at top speed to make up for lost time. The family barely squeaked into church before the services began.
Christmas was celebrated with family togetherness, religious observance and exuberant glee. There were not a lot of presents, but each one was selected with care and deemed by the sisters to be perfect. And always, there were beautiful dolls from the nuns decked out in elaborate crocheted outfits.
All five members of the family made an excursion a couple of days before Christmas each year to shop for the tree. As soon as they were home, the decoration began. One year, the group trekked out into the woods, where Harold chopped down a tree and lugged it back home. It was a twisted, Charlie Brown Christmas kind of tree, but the girls loved it just the same.
Christmas morning, the first one to wake up would rouse her sisters. Betty Ann, Rosemary and Margaret tip-toed down to the tree and gazed at it and the packages beneath its branches. They tried to contain their excitement, but it bubbled out of them like soda from an agitated can. Full of unabated anticipation, they raced to their parents’ bedroom, where they begged and pleaded until Elizabeth and Harold relented and got out of bed.
Later, the family would travel up a winding road on a steep hill to visit with the Provincial Sisters at their convent to thank them for their dolls. After a polite social interval, they would troop into the chapel and give their thanks to God. It was a pleasant annual ritual, but the young girls were always eager to complete the pilgrimage and go back home to play with their toys.
In addition to the fun of Christmas, the winter season brought massive quantities of snow to New England. The drifts were so high, the girls could burrow caves in their depths and build impregnable forts where they crawled and climbed for hours.
The girls all enjoyed ice-skating on the nearby pond. But best of all, they loved it when their dad pulled out the toboggan and took them all for a ride. They wedged on, one behind the other and soared down one hill, up another, then down the second hill and back to the house. Always the little voices demanded another hair-raising descent. They never wanted to go back inside.
When they were finally coaxed in from their winter wonderland, they piled their rubber boots by the door and laid their sopping wet mittens on the radiator. Soon, the air was filled with the peculiar earthy smell of wool overheating as it dried.
Unlike little Margaret, who was content to roam the hills with just her dog for company, Betty Ann craved the companionship of others. A constant stream of her friends flowed through the doors of the McKee home. Her younger sisters remembered many rides in the car to deliver Betty Ann to friends who lived twenty or thirty minutes away.
Betty Ann kicked off her teenage years in her typical gregarious fashion—with a Halloween party planned with elaborate care. In the dark basement of their old home, candles flickered in corners. The gaggle of giggling, screaming children grabbed hold of the ropes strung downstairs to guide them through the murky labyrinth. They stopped at stations set up along the way, where a gruesome story spilled out one body part at a time.
They felt the bowl of eyeballs—in actuality a bunch of peeled grapes. They held the severed hand—a rubber glove filled with Jell-O. And stuck their hands deep into the bowl of brains—a container of cold spaghetti. It was a delightful and spooky night filled with mock horror.
After the squeals subsided, Father John Randall, the priest at the Novitiate, judged the costumes. Margaret, disguised as a fairy princess, won first place.
When she entered her teens, Betty Ann developed a real love for automobiles and the freedom they represented. Her father, who sold Ford cars for the National Motor Company in Woonsocket, often thrilled her by driving home new models. If he came to the house with a convertible, Betty Ann insisted on a photo session as she posed beside the car and behind the wheel.
A natural love for children led Betty Ann into a lucrative baby-sitting business—at fifty cents an hour, she was not getting rich, but it did provide the spending money a teenager always craved. She did so well caring for the kids that some of her clientele would cancel their plans for the evening if they found out she was not available.
Often, she baby-sat the two sons, Peter and Bob Farrelly, of a doctor and his wife. These two brothers grew up to write and direct hysterical Hollywood hits like Kingpin, Dumb and Dumber and Something About Mary.
Betty Ann’s high level of creativity screamed for expression. Everyone who crossed her path became the subject of one of her charcoal sketches. Her musical talent was astonishing. She started piano lessons at an early age on the family’s upright piano. For her 16th birthday, her parents gave her a baby grand. Any song she ever heard she could repeat with ease and grace.
But her musical skill did not stop with the piano. Throughout her life, she had the ability to master any instrument that came her way. She often played the organ for benediction on Monday nights at the parish church. She loved sitting on her stool, singing folk songs as she accompanied herself on her Martin guitar. Her favorite pieces were the ones she had heard Joan Baez sing. She played at many gigs on campuses and in coffee shops during and after college.
Throughout her teenage years, a yearning grew inside of Betty Ann. Like George Bailey of It’s a Wonderful Life, she was consumed by a passion to travel to foreign lands, to learn the cultures of different people, to escape from “the sticks.” Although many found contentment in such a peaceful, pastoral childhood in New England, to Betty Ann the tranquility was like a prison.
Nonetheless, she dutifully attended nearby Salve Regina College, the college by the sea, in Newport, Rhode Island. The school was chartered by the State of Rhode Island in 1934 and founded as an institution by the Sisters of Mercy. Established as an independent school in the Catholic tradition of education, this co-ed college did not begin to accept students until 1947 when it acquired Ochre Court, a limestone French Flamboyant Gothic palace. The first class of fifty-eight students attended all their classes in this mansion with its high roofs, turrets and whimsical gargoyles. The opulent building now houses the school’s administrative offices.
When she entered the school in 1960, the enrollment at the college was less than five hundred. She had left “Betty Ann” at home. She introduced herself as Liz McKee to all of her new friends.