Elizabeth Backfield

PICKENS — Elizabeth "Betty" Backfield of Pickens, S.C., died on the morning of April 20, 2020. She was 86.

The daughter of Capt. J. Hinton Graves, Jr. and Ellen Keogh, she was born in Upper Darby, Penn. She moved several times as a child due to her father's Navy career, but graduated from Bayside High on Long Island and always considered herself a New Yorker. Contemplating the religious life, she attended Nazareth College in Kentucky before discerning a different calling and graduating from the Lenox Hill Hospital School of Nursing in Queens, N.Y.

In 1958, she married psychiatrist Hajdar Xhema, of Tupale, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, and lived with him and their four children (Liz, Tony, Aziza, and Ellen) in Rye, N.Y. Following Dr. Xhema's death, she settled in Williamsburg, Va., where she remained for decades. She earned a Bachelor's degree from the College of William & Mary while working as a nurse and teacher and raising four children as a single mother. In the 1990s, she would return to William & Mary, earning a Master's degree and working as a counselor for abused women.

In 1974, she married Sgt. Joseph ("Joe") Backfield (U.S. Army – Ret.) of Brooklyn, N.Y., who had three children from a previous marriage (Fred, Mike, and Ruth). The couple had one child (Sam) together.

Betty will be remembered for her warmth, her moral conviction, her intellectual curiosity, her laugh, and her slightly impish sense of humor. A devout Catholic, Betty was an active parishioner at St. Bede's Catholic Church in Williamsburg, Va., and Holy Cross Catholic Church in Pickens, S.C. She poured herself into caring for others through her chosen professions of nursing, teaching, counseling at-risk women, and most especially in the raising of her children, and her many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Betty is preceded in death by her husbands, Hajdar and Joe, and her brothers Joey and Jim. She is survived by her sisters Barbara and Martha, eight children and stepchildren, 25 grandchildren, and an increasing number of great-grandchildren.

Due to pandemic-related restrictions, she was buried next to her late husband Joe in a small, private service at the Parklawn-Wood Memorial Park in Hampton, Va. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations in honor of Betty may be made to the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy (sisterfaustina.org), the Cardinal Newman Society (newmansociety.org), or the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth (scnfamily.org).

Online condolence may be sent to www.dillardfunerals.com

Dillard Funeral Home is assisting the Backfield Family