One of the hallmarks of work at the Florida Supreme Court is how much the judges and staff come to view each other as family. Today, our extended is remembering one of our beloved courthouse kindred, Betsy Hill.
Betsy worked for many years in our Court Clerk’s Office. She was loved for her gentle kindness, her rollicking sense of humor, and the ease with which she did her job while being warm and welcoming to everyone she encountered.
The Florida Supreme Court extends a heartfelt invitation to all its current and former staff to join the friends and family who are organizing this Celebration of Life for Betsy Hill.
In honor of our old friend and colleague Betsy Hill, I rummaged through my photo files and pulled together a collage of images. Most are from the crazy days in the fall of 2000 when Court staff truly had to pull together as a tight-knit family. Our task was to support our judges as they resolved the Bush v. Gore cases that would determine who would become the next President of the United States.
It is easy to see from these photos how central Betsy was to our Court Family. One of her major tasks was to help hand out paper copies of opinions to an unruly and boisterous mob outside our doors. She also helped compile the record that her boss, Clerk of Court Tom Hall, had to personally transport to Washington in a small state plane when the nation’s highest Court began hearing an appeal from Florida.
Those were heady times. And all of us here at the Court left them feeling that our ties as a Court Family had only grown deeper and more meaningful. God speed, Betsy Hill, who was one of the best of that group.
Robert Craig Waters 