Mary “Betty” Graves
January 7, 1933 ~ December 30, 2025
Falmouth – Mary Elizabeth Lewis Graves (Betty), age 92, passed away peacefully at her home in Falmouth, Maine, on December 30, 2025.
Betty was born at home in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, on a stormy January night in 1933 to Margaret Cowan Lewis and Charles S. Lewis. She was the second of three children, raised in a loving home whose life centered around family and church. During World War II, she collected bottles and chicken grease to contribute to the war effort and even moved to Mississippi when her father taught navigation to Air Force pilots. The family calendar always culminated on the last day of school, when they traveled to the beloved family farm in Sidney, Maine, to help with the hay harvest, slop the pigs, and swim in Lake Messalonskee.
A product of Boston Public Schools, Betty graduated from Girls’ Latin School and received a National Merit Scholarship to Bates College. There, she became a registered nurse and met her lifelong partner, Donald Graves. They married a year before her graduation in 1955 and a visibly pregnant Betty was discreetly handed her diploma, as a pregnant student marching in cap and gown was rather scandalous at the time.
Much has been written about the “Greatest Generation,” but far less about the women who built the foundation on which that generation stood. Betty embodied that strength. She could simultaneously nurse an infant, play Go Fish, and sharply assess a teenager’s hemline. She could make a box of government cheese and a single roast chicken feed a family of seven for a week. She sewed matching Easter dresses, refinished furniture rescued from the dump, and worked night shifts at a nursing home. Most importantly, she listened—with nonjudgmental sympathy, with wisdom, and always with a gentle push forward. In her home built on this strong foundation of love, intelligence, and competence, she raised five resilient children through the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, while keeping an extraordinary and high-maintenance husband ready for the world.
Betty’s greatest joy was her grandchildren. With them, she let loose and had fun. Can we ride the mattress down the stairs, Grandma? Can we stomp through the puddles? Will you borrow a helmet and skate down the hill with us? The answer was, of course, yes. As her grandchildren grew, her home remained a secure and welcoming place to usher them into adulthood.
Betty was also a foundation for those beyond her family. Her Christianity was active and grounded in service to others. She took in mothers who had nowhere else to go, supporting them within her already busy household. She traveled to Honduras to serve on medical teams, donated generously, and volunteered countless hours with organizations serving children locally and around the world. She also read to and funded trips for hundreds of children at Reiche Elementary School in Portland.
Betty’s life provided a strong foundation for many generations to stand on, grow from and, in turn, build for others. She will be deeply missed.
Betty is survived by her siblings Ellen Huff of Old Town, Maine and her brother Raymond Lewis of Brunswick, Maine; her daughter Marion Chang and husband Che-ming of Toronto, Ontario; her daughter Alyce Graves of Falmouth, Maine; her daughter Caroline and husband John Hodsdon of Cumberland, Maine; her son William Graves of Portsmouth, New Hampshire; her daughter Laura Graves and husband William Needelman of Portland, Maine; grandchildren Sara Chang and husband Pranesh Chakraborty, Andrew Chang and wife Samantha Frosst, Geoffrey Chang, Joseph Hebert and wife Sabrina, Margaret Nagle and husband Eric, Greg Hodsdon and wife Molly West, Lena Needelman, James Needelman, and 10 great grandchildren. She was predeceased by her husband of 56 years, Donald H. Graves.
A memorial service will be held at Falmouth Congregational Church, 267 Falmouth Rd., Falmouth, at 11:00 a.m. on January 24, with reception to follow. Arrangements are under the direction of the Conroy-Tully Walker Cremation, Funeral, and Gathering Center, 300 Allen Avenue, Portland. To view Betty’s Memorial Page, or to share an online condolence, please visit www.ConroyTullyWalker.com.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Greater Portland Family Promise or Immigrant Legal Action Project.
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Thank- you so much for your kind words. Mom always had a sparkle in her eye! You never knew what was coming next!
A prayer for Ma…..Merciful Father You birthed Your Son and Saviour of the world into a violent and unpredictable world and entrusted him into the hands of a young woman. How blessed and fortunate and All Powerful is the nurturing and faithful love of a mother in this world. Thank you Father for having blessed us with a woman who walked in Your Love and who touched so many with Your Spirit of forgiveness and compassion and patience, when You were hungry and cast out she took You in. When You were naked she clothed You. We all have two apointments that we must keep Father, as You have told us. One when we leave this world and another when we must stand before You and give account. How blessed we were to have Mary in our lives and that Spirit from You which she shared with us continues with us all, may we nurture it in Your Love and preserve Your Precious Gift as I know she would want us to do. We should all be so blessed as Mary to live a long life around those we love to bring them into the world and to see them into their old age. You ran the race well Mom, an example to us all and now may you hear the Words …”Well done good and faithful servant welcome into the Joy of The Lord”, I am comforted and blessed to know that she is at rest with You Merciful Father and free from the trials of this world….In Jesus Most Merciful and Gracious Name
Forty-seven years ago Betty welcomed me into her family, as her son-in-law. All the time that I spent with her, she treated me with sincerity and love. I never experienced so-called ‘cultural barriers’ with her. I admired her enthusiasm for nature and experiencing different cultures. She wasn’t afraid to travel, especially to see our family, visiting Toronto and later Ottawa many times. When our family went abroad, she still visited. In 1996 during the missile crisis in the Taiwan Straits, she visited Marion and the kids in the small Taiwan village where I grew up. In 2008, she went to India for our daughter Sara’s wedding. In 2013 at age 80, she treated us to a China tour. We visited the Great Wall, Beijing’s Forbidden City, the Terracotta warriors in Xi An, and the city of Xi Ning on the Tibetan Plateau. Her energy amazed me! I will forever treasure my memories with her.
I had the honor of joining Betty and several others with the ACTS program on a medical mission to Honduras in the mid 90s. Betty was so welcoming and wise. Despite the setting (we traveled to several towns and cities), Betty’s calm demeanor prevailed. I think of her with affection and feel blessed to have shared those days with her. RIP Betty – Susan Forte Laverack, Holderness, NH
Mary, Betty, Gramma and Gran Gran. That is how I knew her. Oh and Mother In-law. She stepped in the same year my mother passed away. 1977 was the year I married her daughter Caroline. She always, to this last month, offered and welcomed a hug. A small serving of Pistachio nuts and a glass of water set waiting for her arrival for her weekly dinner and visit with us. She was very supportive in all ways and all of her kids and their family’s. And knowing all the family I clearly see a lot of her in them all. She always had ideas for the grand kids. Walks in the woods in Jackson NH, sliding the snow covered hills and hot chocolate to follow. Wonderful Holiday meals and games. And always a cold beverage in her fridge! She will be missed by many and remembered by all!
Until we meet again. Love you Gramma
Jack
My Grandmother, Betty, had a remarkable influence on me from my early childhood, onwards. She clearly had a tremendous sense of inner peace, and I was challenged to match her approach to complex and seemingly tedious tasks. She wasn’t worn down by her work. Rather, she took a task upon herself, like trimming many string beans, and she held her focus, and calmness, all the way through, from when she started the task all the way until the task was done. What amazed me was that she wasn’t ’taxed’ by doing seemingly boring or repetitive errands. She had focus, but more importantly, she had a calmness, or perhaps peace, from when she started a task, all the way through until she finished it. When I was young, I was very cognizant that most adults, and almost all children, did not possess this ability. The world wore them down, especially when they were working, and especially when those tasks were tedious, and time consuming.
The next time I saw that she was preparing string beans, I was keen to ask her if I could help. She said, “Alright”, and she passed me the bowl of beans, and went back to her numerous cooking priorities. I likely wasn’t more than ten years old at the time, and she didn’t quite understand why I would volunteer for a less-than-prestigeous kitchen task. I then pulled up a counter chair, looked at the beans and then I asked her “Can I snap the beans with you?”. She definitely paused. “Yes,”, she said. “In just a minute.”
There was something about how she approached small tasks, big tasks, speaking with new people, going to new countries, sewing, disassembling and reassembling foot-powered organs, and maybe even drinking wine, that was not ‘task-like’ or ‘problem solving-like’.
When she took on a task, or an adventure, the world wasn’t something that was wearing her down – it was something she was participating in, and actively changing. And she wasn’t going to let pessimists tell her what was going to happen, if she went ‘over there’, or decided to talk ‘to one of those people’. She wen’t out, on her own, to find out herself. And I never asked her how many people she proved wrong, in all her years of encountering the world firsthand, but I suspect she gave up counting a long time ago.