Betty Compton, Laurel Historical Society’s founding member, remembered

By KATIE V. JONES

While enjoying rides around the city of Laurel, Betty Compton would tell her friend Gayle Snyder what each building was and its history.

“I never met anyone like her,” Snyder said. “She taught me so much.”

Ann Bennett, Laurel Historical Society’s former executive director, called Compton “a visionary leader and forward thinker in the museum community.”

“It was because of Betty that the museum doesn’t serve as an 1840s historic house, but as the home for Laurel’s history on a variety of topics allowing LHS to take deep dives into the stories of Laurel’s past,” Bennett wrote in an email.

Elizabeth “Betty” Miles Compton passed away on Feb. 12. The co-founder of Laurel Historical Society and the Laurel Museum, Compton was born on April 8, 1926 in Laurel and attended both Laurel Elementary School and Laurel High School.

During World War II, she studied at Women’s Hospital School of Nursing in Baltimore City where she met and married J. Richard “Dick” Compton, a brigadier general with the U.S. Army. The couple would go on to live in Colorado, Arkansas, Kentucky, North Carolina and Japan before settling in Laurel. The couple had two sons, Gregory Alan Compton and Peter Miles Compton.

“I went on a job interview and she hired me,” Snyder said, who worked for Compton and her husband at his private medical practice on Main Street.

“We were just very close friends. I loved her from the very beginning,” Snyder said. When Compton and her husband moved to a retirement community in Washington D.C., the two remained close, with Snyder visiting weekly in later years

“We would sit on her sofa, have a cocktail and have some great conversation,” Snyder said. 

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Laurel Historical Society. Bennett said plans were in the works to recognize Compton for her role in both the society’s and museum’s beginnings.

“Although I am very sad that she is no longer here to champion our work, I echo her words in her last email to me: “I will not say goodbye” because I know her lasting legacy and love for her hometown and its people will be felt for generations,” Bennett wrote.

“I am profoundly grateful to have known her and even more blessed to have worked with her over seven years on her “favorite subject” – Laurel,” Bennett wrote.