Elizabeth Ingram Yankwich, 91, previously a longtime resident of Urbana, Illinois, died on July 18, 2014, in her residence at The Samarkand in Santa Barbara, California. Betty was born July 10, 1923, in Pasadena, California to Stuart and Etta Jacob Ingram. She married Peter Yankwich of Los Angeles in July 1945, in South Pasadena, California.  Her husband, a professor of chemistry and vice president of academic affairs at the University of Illinois, predeceased her in 2004.

Betty obtained her bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1945. She majored in psychology and was editor of the Daily Cal, president of the Mortar Board, and a member of Gamma Phi Beta sorority. She also obtained a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Illinois in 1983.

While living in Urbana from 1948 to 1988, Betty became involved in numerous community organizations, co-founding the Playtime Nursery School, heading the local chapters of the Junior League and the League of Women Voters, managing congressional campaigns for Democrats Bob Wilson and Helen Satterthwaite, and serving on such boards as the United Way, the Voluntary Action Center, the Family Service Agency, the Retired Senior Volunteer Program and the National Academy of the Arts, and on the Mayor's Commission on Intergovernmental Cooperation, and on the Planning Commission for a County Mental Health District. She was a member of Emmanuel Memorial Episcopal Church in Champaign.

In the late 1960s, Betty returned to full-time work. At the University of Illinois she became the executive assistant to the director for the Center for Advanced Study, then assistant to the director for the Department of Sociology, then assistant director at the Center for the Study of Reading in the School of Education. She also worked as the acting principal for the National Academy of the Dance. In the mid-1980s she became the director of operations for the American Arts Alliance, and later, a management consultant.  In retirement, the Yankwichs moved to Santa Barbara, California.

Betty is survived by her three children, Alexandra Yankwich of Emerald Isle, North Carolina, Leon Yankwich of Brookline, Massachusetts, and Richard Yankwich of Palo Alto; as well as four grandchildren.  Survivors also include her sister Martha Pilorz of Santa Barbara, and her brother, Thomas Ingram (SPHS '49) of Reading, Pennsylvania.

The News-Gazette, August 10, 2014