Betty S. Miller Proud Bonacker

Betty S. Miller, a lifelong member of the Amagansett Presbyterian Church who was proud of her Bonac roots, died at Southampton Hospital on Jan. 27 of congestive heart failure. She was about a month shy of her 87th birthday.

Mrs. Miller, who could trace her Amagansett family back 11 generations, was born to William H. Schellinger and the former Bessie Hawkins on Feb. 26, 1930, and grew up on Abraham’s Path. She was the eighth of her  parents’ nine children and the only one to graduate from high school, her brothers having gone off to war and her sisters to marriages. She graduated from East Hampton High School in 1949.

She married George E. Miller, whom she knew since childhood, on Feb. 11, 1950, at the Amagansett Presbyterian Church. His family also has roots in the area going back to the 1600s. The couple lived in Amagansett most of their married life. Mr. Miller owned the Amagansett Texaco gas station, and later the Shell station in East Hampton, where Saunders Real Estate is now. She was a homemaker.

In 1994, the couple moved to Cushing, Me., where they had often vacationed. Mr. Miller died the next year. She would remain living there for 22 years, until selling her house last year and moving in with her daughter, Deborah Dubrow, in Southampton. 

Ms. Dubrow said her mother loved baking and spending time with her family and going for walks with her dog. She and her sister, the late Charlotte Hamilton, were always in charge of the baked goods and candy tables at the Amagansett Presbyterian Church’s summer fair. She also enjoyed clamming and picking blueberries, cranberries, and beach plums on Napeague. In addition to her church, Mrs. Miller was a member of the Eastern Star.

In addition to Ms. Dubrow, Mrs. Miller is survived by two other daughters, Pamela Glennon of Amagansett and Georgia Loper of Springs. An older sister, Janet Halliday of Sag Harbor, and her youngest sister, Virginia Koons of Iowa, also survive, as do five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Her brothers, George, William, Arthur, Morley, and Donald Schellinger, died before her, as did her sister.

A funeral service was held at the Amagansett Presbyterian Church on Feb. 1. Mrs. Miller was cremated, and a private burial will take place at Oak Grove Cemetery in Amagansett in the spring.

Memorial donations were suggested to Southampton Volunteer Ambulance, 1232 North Sea Road, N.Y. 11968, or to the Salvation Army through its website.