you come see me," Miss Betty whispers to the student, who exhales and smiles. Miss Betty gazes out the atrium window onto the terrace and spies a young man in the middle of a diverse group of friends. He is gay, and he talked to her about that one day. "I tell him I love him like everybody else," she said.
When a harried student feels rushed about determining their big next step, Miss Betty counsels: "Don't make your decision now. Go home and sleep." Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles tells her own story of
coming to Queens in 1969. Te five Black girls on what was then a segregated campus could only be assigned to one another as paired roommates. Te fifth one roomed by herself. Lyles soon felt like this was not the place for her. She recalled that Miss Betty's care and attention for these girls sometimes took the form of extra cookies. But it was the daily example Miss Betty set in her own work that struck Lyles as a kind of
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building block for life: first, be where you are with what you've got. "She was a fixture. She was someone I saw as
standing up," said Lyles, who by mayoral proclamation declared Aug. 25, 2022, as "Miss Betty Day." "To see how she reacted and delivered what she had as a domestic, she was a presence for me. She was a presence who helped you stay where you are. It's not a big story, but it's a story we should remember. Today, I look back and see what kind of backbone she had to have to be there." Tat backbone has served Miss Betty and Queens
University well. Today, as "queen of Queens," she is a sort of campus rock star who has even been known to twerk with students on social media. Her ways have changed with the times, but Miss
Betty's love and service still seek out and fill the needs of those around her, day in and day out. And when she knows it's right, she will push harder, maybe
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