Elizabeth Ellen Dance

Elizabeth Ellen Dance, a Winchester-based writer, environmental activist, and entrepreneur, died of cancer on July 31, 2021, at Winchester Medical Center. She was 60 years old.

Betsy, as she was known to friends, grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and graduated in 1977 from Miss Porter’s School for Girls in Connecticut. After receiving a B.A. from the University of Virginia in 1984, she honed her writing skills at the National Geographic and Phillips Publishing in Washington D.C., and went on to write nonfiction essays, features, and investigative pieces for The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, Readers’ Digest, and The New Yorker magazine. An inquisitive nature and preternatural ease at connecting with people in all walks of life also led to a second job as private investigator for criminal defense lawyers in low-income communities. In 1998, her passion for storytelling turning to fiction, she received a Masters of Fine Arts Degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University.

Betsy was also a committed environmental activist, and returned to the Detroit area in 1999 to found a nonprofit organization, Local Motion, dedicated to mobilizing community concern about the effects of carcinogens used in the automotive industry. Later, in Charlottesville, Virginia, she embarked on another environmental effort that was ahead of its time: Eco-Clean, likely the first cleaning company in that area that used only organic products. She also worked as a communications specialist at UVA’s Darden School of Business, helping promote ambitious community development projects in economically distressed rural communities.

In 2016, Betsy founded a new business that reflected her generous, buoyant spirit and hard-won experience caring for family members and friends in times of need: Leave It To Betsy, which provided families with respectful assistance of all kinds. Several of her clients were confronting the ends of their lives, and she devoted herself to helping them exit with dignity, lightness, and imagination.

She spent the last four years of her own life in Winchester, Virginia, where in addition to her Leave it to Betsy work she became a communications specialist for health-related newsletters and small businesses. She also volunteered at the Winchester Historical Society; learned to play the bagpipes; tended a battalion of stray cats; and, as ever, wrote fiction and nonfiction, much of it based on her inventive, unconventional life. She is survived by brothers William Dance of Los Angeles, CA and Theodore Dance of West Palm Beach, FL among other loving relatives and friends. Details about a forthcoming memorial service can be obtained by contacting wdance17@gmail.com, and donations in Betsy’s memory may be made to the Winchester SPCA, 111 Featherbed Lane, Winchester, VA 22601.