Elizabeth D. McKellar dies

Soon after starting voice studies with Wagnerian baritone Friedrich Schorr in New York, first soprano Elizabeth "Betty" Dickman McKellar left to sing for U.S. troops in World War II combat zones in Europe.

A member of a USO camp show in Belgium, "she said her most terrifying experience was escaping during the Battle of the Bulge (in 1944)," said a daughter, Elizabeth Eastlake of Richmond.

With German bombs dropping, Mrs. McKellar and her companions collected their evening gowns from a dry cleaners and evacuated on blacked-out weapons carriers "with guns going off a mile a minute," she told a granddaughter in a 2005 interview.

No one saw the certificate thanking her for service to her country for 40 or 50 years after the war, when family members chanced upon it in her photo album.

Mrs. McKellar, who also served as a U.S. spy in Italy before retiring as an elementary school music teacher in Rockland County, N.Y., died Oct. 22 in a Richmond hospice of complications from a stroke she suffered on Oct. 2.

The 88-year-old Richmond resident, who moved here after more than 50 years in Nanuet, N.Y., will be honored at a graveside service Saturday at 11 a.m. in Mount Hope Cemetery in Florence, S.C., the town of her birth.

"My mom had this incredible life that she kept under wraps for years," Eastlake said. "She was a very independent thinker, very spunky, a nontraditionalist."

Born prematurely and with health problems, she spent five years in bed and nine in leg braces. "When she got healthier, she pursued her love of music. It paved the way for adventure," Eastlake said.

By the time she was 28, she had added a master's degree in music education from Manhattan School of Music to her bachelor's degree from Greensboro College.

In post-war Rome, pursuing music study, she became an operative for the U.S. embassy, using her student and tourist status as a cover. "She handled top-secret information, critical information after the war. If what she was doing had fallen into enemy hands, it would have been catastrophic," Eastlake said.

While in Rome, she married Robert Hargrove McKellar in 1954. He died in 1997.

Upon their return to the United States, she taught elementary music in the East Ramapo Central School (N.Y.) District and piano lessons on the side until she retired in the 1980s.

Survivors, besides her daughter, include another daughter, Kathryn Lackey of McKinney, Texas; and four grandchildren.

Contact Ellen Robertson at (804) 649-6115 or .