Beth Baker Hildreth

1931 - 2025

Beth Baker Hildreth

August 17, 1931 - July 30, 2025

Spring Hope, North Carolina - Beth Dixon Baker Hildreth, 93, passed away peacefully in Burlington, N.C. On Wednesday July 30, 2025 with family at her side. A memorial service will be announced later.

Beth was born August 17, 1931 to John R. And Maggie Dixon Baker in Spring Hope, North Carolina. She grew up in Spring Hope, attending Spring Hope High School where she played varsity basketball all four years. She followed in her mother's footsteps, attending East Carolina Teachers College, where she graduated in 1952 with a Bachelor of Science in Primary Education. During the summer of her Junior year at college she attended a modeling school in New York City and was selected to represent Spring Hope in the Miss North Carolina pageant, where her talent was tap dancing.

While teaching elementary school in Pinehurst Beth met a young Air Force pilot from Arkansas, James "Cotton" Hildreth. Five months later they were married. Beth and Cotton remained married for 66 years, until Cotton's death in 2022. During his active career Beth set up home thirteen different times in places as far afield as Germany and the Philippines, Clovis, New Mexico, Alexandria, Virginia and Las Vegas, Nevada. Upon Cotton's retirement they moved to Spring Hope, where they lived for the next 41 years. Beth was dedicated to her hometown and her home church, Gibson Memorial Methodist Church, where she played piano for many years as needed. It was a labor of love.

Although her life took her to many places around the world, Spring Hope was a place that Beth never really left. In an oral history interview from 1996 Beth said, "I guess if I ever carried anything in my heart, I carried Spring Hope and Gibson Methodist church (as a place) to get back to."

In reality, Beth had a much larger heart than that and carried so much and so many people in it. She carried joy and sorrow in equal measure, unconditionally loving her friends and family and remembering with longing those she had lost along the way. She loved her husband faithfully, loved her five children expansively, her fourteen grandchildren proudly and her eleven great-grandchildren with delight. Beth never gave up on anyone and always had empathy for the overlooked, misunderstood and cast out. She respected and championed Senior Citizens long before she became one herself. Everyone was greeted with a smile. She loved to laugh and make others laugh with a self deprecating sense of humor and story telling. Beth also loved dogs, from "Betty", her childhood pet to "Peanut", her last canine companion.

Beth Baker Hildreth was a product of a place and time, a place and time now more distant with her passing. Her accolades aren't hanging on walls, her accomplishments aren't measured and quantified but her value and impact was demonstrated every day with steadfastness, love, sympathy, kindness, humor and gentleness. She will be missed by all who knew her.

Beth is survived by her five children, John (Barbara) of Charleston, SC, Reid (Wanda) of Spring Hope, Margaret Frye (Wes) of Canton, GA, Mark (Nancy) of Cameron, NC and Amy Hart (Philip Van Kampen) of Burlington, NC, her fourteen grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren.

For those that wish to remember Beth the family requests that donations be made in her memory to Gibson Memorial Methodist Church, 202 East Branch Street, Spring Hope, NC, 27882. A memorial service will be announced later.

A transcript of her oral history interview can be found here:

https://lib.digitalnc.org/nanna/record/125/files/braswell_bhildreth_01_a_side1_transcript.pdf?withWatermark=0&withMetadata=0®isterDownload=1&version=1.