Betty Joyce Welsh Jackson

Betty Joyce Welsh Jackson, 93, passed away in Scaggsville, Maryland on June 22, 2022. She was born in Scaggsville on November 19, 1928, the daughter of Leslie Raymond Welsh and Mary Lillian Welsh. She lived most of her adult life in Silver Spring, Maryland until 2010 when she moved back to Scaggsville to live with her daughter and son-in-law, Leslie and Frank Kelly. She was an employee of the Naval Ordinance Laboratory in White Oak, Maryland except for a fifteen-year period when she was a stay-at-home mother.

Betty was a patriotic democrat and had a reputation for being generous and tenacious. She demonstrated her tenacity when her nephew, Ralph Poe, was wounded in Vietnam. She spent over three hours on the phone transferring from one agency to another until she found out his location in a Japanese hospital. When Washington, D.C. was burning after the Martin Luther King assassination, she drove into the city and needed a police escort to get a wedding veil for her niece, Sharon Seek.

Betty Jackson is survived by her siblings, Gloria Tucker, Warren Welsh, children, Deborah Zalesak (Thomas), Leslie Kelly (Francis), and Ray Jackson (Rebekah), grandchildren, Julia Zalesak, Lisa Anderes, Frank Kelly, Leslie Kelly, Brooks Kelly, Laurel Kelly, step grandchildren, Ayla Gould, Maranda White, Rocky White, and great-grandchildren, Jackson Anderes, Christian Anderes, Isabella Anderes, Sunny Kelly, Quincy Kabasa, and Bruce Kabasa, and many nieces and nephews. Betty was preceded in death by her husband of 31 years, F. Ray Jackson, parents, Leslie Raymond Welsh and Mary Lillian Welsh, and her siblings, Hazel Welsh, Vivian Welsh, Blanche Poe, Lorraine Chesgreen, Olga Owens, and Leslie Raymond Welsh, Jr.

Graveside prayers will be recited by family members on Tuesday, June 28, 2022 at 1:00 pm at the Emmanuel United Methodist Church cemetery in Scaggsville, Maryland.