Obituary: Bettina R. Tierney

Bettina Rathbone Tierney died in her home in Mclean, Va. on November 9, 2012. She was also a resident of the Boca Grande Club.

Bettina attended the Potomac School (formerly in Washington, now in Mclean), with which she and her family has had a long and special association. She also attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Conn., and Wellesley College where she majored in art history.

Mrs. Tierney was a member of the Junior League of Washington, D.C. and among her volunteer activities with the League were as an assistant in the Washington Planned Parenthood Clinic and as a docent at the National Gallery of Art.

Mrs. Tierney sang with the New Dominion Chorale for more than 20 years.

She had a lifetime love of sailing which began with her father, Livingston Hartley, and continued with her husband in the waters of Buzzard's Bay, Nonquitt, Maine, and the Chesapeake Bay. She and her husband were members of the Annapolis Yacht Club, the New Bedford Yacht Club and the Eastern Yacht Club of Marblehead, Mass.

She was also a member of the Sulgrave Club.

Mrs. Tierney owned and managed the Whale’s Tail, a lady's boutique, in Mclean, Va. for 10 years.

She was born in Washington, D.C., in 1937 into a family with long associations with Washington and U.S. history. Her great-grandparents, Henry and Clara Harris Rathbone, were President and Mrs. Abraham Lincoln’s guests in their box at Ford's Theatre on the night the president was assassinated. John Wilkes Booth seriously wounded Maj. Rathbone with a knife when he attempted to restrain Booth after he shot the president.

Mrs. Tierney’s grandfather, Dr. Buckner McGill Randolph, was the chief of medicine at Walter Reed Hospital throughout the First World War and the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. The flu killed her grandmother, Clara Pauline Rathbone Randolph.

Mrs. Tierney is survived by Philip Tierney, her husband of 51 years; her three sons, Christopher Randolph Tierney (Ann) of Arlington, Va.; Philip Andrew Tierney (Laurel), of Silver Spring, Md.; David Hartley Tierney (Sabura) of Pope Valley, Calif.; grandchildren Ted, Megan, Isabel, Louisa (Lulu), Angus, and Sabur Philip; and a brother, Robert, of California.

Funeral services were scheduled to be held in Washington.