Betty Ann Lussier

Betty Ann Lussier of Rock Hall, MD, passed away on November 30, 2017, at her home. She was 95. Ms. Lussier was born December 20, 1921, in Alberta, Canada. Her family moved to the U.S. when she was four. Her father had been a flying Ace for the R.A.F. in WWI. After the war, he became a farmer. Ms. Lussier grew up in Rock Hall and Chestertown, and briefly attended Washington University. She transferred to University of Maryland to study journalism, but was anxious to join the war effort and hopped a freighter to England in 1942 where she joined the British Air Transport Authority as a pilot. After a year she joined the O.S.S., precursor to the CIA, and served there as a counter-spy until the end of the war. She married a Spaniard who had served with her in the O.S.S. She recounted her wartime experiences in a book she wrote five years before her death, "Intrepid Woman." Ms. Lussier married Ricardo Sicre, a Captain in the U.S. Army, in England at the end of WWII (1945). At the time, they were both assigned to the Office of Strategic Services in Europe, where they met. They were divorced in 1975. hey remained best friends and neither of them ever remarried. Mr. Sicre died in 1993. After the war, Ms. Lussier moved to Spain and started a family with her husband who had founded an import-export business with some wartime friends. However, she grew restless being a housewife, and after the birth of her fourth and last son she moved to Morocco, where she started a corn farm and championed workers' rights, which got her expelled from the country. She recounted these experiences in her book "One Woman Farm." As her children grew older, she moved to Switzerland, where they were studying, to look after them. Concurrently she finished her B.A. at the U. of Maryland, which coincidentally was the official university of the U.S. military in Europe. When her sons moved to the U.S. for their college studies, she moved with them to New York and got a masters degree in social work from Columbia University. Upon graduation, she separated from her husband and became a social worker in the New York area, alternating with similar work in Africa for the U.N. and for Christian charity organizations. She also worked for AID in Senegal and in Morocco, where she spent three years teaching single and divorced women how to make a living and lead independent lives. After retirement, she lived in Staten Island, N.Y., for a number of years, before settling in Pacific Palisades, CA, where she spent most of her later years, active in community affairs and busy writing her wartime memoirs. She was a frequent visitor to Rock Hall, where her older sister, Jane Strong lived, and moved there in 2015, after she had developed Alzheimer's disease. She was cared for by her niece, Joan, and her two daughters, Rosalind and Holly. Ms. Lussier is survived by three sons, Emile Sicre of Mallorca, Spain; Jay Sicre, of Madrid, Spain; and Penn Sicre, of Santa Monica, CA. Her eldest son, Ricardo Sicre, died in 2011 of a heart attack. He lived in London, England. She had nine grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Services will be held at a later date.

Betty Ann Lussier

December 20, 1921 - November 30, 2017