Betsy Smith Bergquist
Betsy Morse (Smith) Bergquist, 93, of Olympia, Washington, passed away peacefully on July 6, 2026, while surrounded by family. Betsy grew up in Montclair, New Jersey, the daughter of Frederick Morse Smith and Helen Hand Torrens Smith.
Betsy had a passion for helping people come together and building bridges of understanding. This was a theme in her life, beginning with a summer in Norway during her college years where she lived with a Norwegian family through the Experiment in International Living.
Social activism became a big part of Betsy’s life in the 1960’s while living in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, where her husband Bruce was teaching at a boys’ prep school. She supported the civil rights movement by getting to know the Black community in Pottstown, became a “women’s libber” by questioning old rules at the Hill School (i.e. Why are faculty wives required to take turns serving coffee at the dining hall?), and was active in the League of Women Voters.
During the 1970’s Betsy continued to be an outspoken advocate for justice and people in need. After she and Bruce and their three children moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, she began volunteering at the local crisis center answering the phones and doing informal counseling, later becoming the trainer for volunteers. She helped to counsel and shelter runaway teens. She traveled to Washington D.C. to protest the Vietnam war and helped organize events to educate people about it.
Betsy had strong opinions about education and believed that it should include more real life experiences. She started a small homeschool for her son and some other neighborhood kids built around this philosophy, and helped pave the way for homeschooling to become legal in Massachusetts. In 1977, after a year of traveling around the US in an Airstream trailer with their son Sam, Betsy and Bruce decided to use their combined experiences in working with young people to start their own small high school where students and staff would live and learn in community. Together they ran Baker River School in Wentworth, NH, for seven years.
After Baker River School, Betsy went on to obtain two Master’s degrees after the age of 55. She earned an MA from Dartmouth College in Women’s Studies in 1987, and then another MA in Psychology and Counseling from Antioch University in Seattle in 1993. Her career as a therapist, specializing in relationship counseling, took off when she was 61 years old and continued until the age of 85. In addition to her private practice, she and Bruce led weekend workshops for couples using the Imago Therapy model for many years, until Bruce’s death in 2018.
Betsy loved children, horses and dogs. Some of her hobbies over the years included swimming (especially lake swimming which she did until age 92), playing tennis, ice skating, camping, road trips, painting, sewing, knitting, and keeping up with current events.
Betsy is preceded in death by her husband Bruce and her two sisters, Sally Cutting and Jay Hague. She leaves behind three children: Sally Bergquist of Olympia Washington, Berit Bergquist of Bainbridge Island Washington, and Sam Bergquist of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, and their partners Chris Maynard, John Fossett, and Stina Hals, and her beloved grandchildren Rachel Bergquist, Jacob and Ellen Fossett, and Isak and Finn Hals-Bergquist. There will be a Memorial Service for Betsy via Zoom on September 20, 2026 at 11AM Pacific Time.
In addition, there will be an evening of singing and sharing memories of Betsy in October (date, time and place TBD) in Olympia, Washington. Please email Sally at Bergquist.sal@gmail.com if you would like to attend and we’ll notify you when details are decided.
