James Betelle, Where Are You?

As satisfying as it is to find an elusive publication, photograph or news item I had been looking for, even more thrilling is finding material I wasn’t looking for. I had a lot of this recently. Last week I came into posession a stack of letter between Betelle and Pierre S. duPont regarding the schools [...]

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Driving to Newark isn’t for the faint of heart. Exiting Route 280 into the bowels of the city is like being swallowed by a mobius strip; once you’re inside, there’s no escape. And yet there I was, this past Saturday morning, navigating the one-way (No left turn! No right turn!) streets in a vain attempt [...]

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Today I ventured over to the Boston Public Library (I’m up in Massachussets this week on vacation), to try and get some odds-and-ends info on Betelle. Having gotten hold of the text of his Time Magazine article a few weeks ago, I wondered if there might have been a photograph to accompany it. After marveling [...]

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John emailed me a few days ago with new information he dug up; Marie Betelle’s obituary from the New York Times: August 30, 1959 Mrs. Marie Ann Louise Betelle, widow of James O. Betelle, an architect, died of a brain hemorrhage early yesterday at University Hospital. She was 52 years old. Mrs. Betelle lived at [...]

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My partner in detective work recently contacted the Millburn-Short Hills Historical Society, knowing that JOB lived in Short Hills for a period. The Betelle cult grows stronger; a member of the Society responded with some great new information, having done considerable detective work:

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