Betty Z. Jordan of Silver Spring passed away on September 15, six weeks before her 104th birthday.

The first American citizen by birth in her family, she was born in Washington, D.C. on October 24, 1921 to Samuel Zaritsky of Kiev and Esther Fishman of Warsaw. As a native Washingtonian born that year, she took her place among the city's residents even before the Lincoln Memorial, inaugurated a few months after she was born, took its place among the city's monuments.

Fate never pampered Betty Jordan in the more than a century that followed. From her earliest years, hardship was a familiar, if unwelcome, companion. Her parents were recent immigrants of limited means, her first language was Yiddish, and she came of age amid the historic high tide of American antisemitism. As a job applicant, she had no education beyond high school to recommend her nor, as a single mother, spousal support to sustain her. Yet Betty did not merely manage; she triumphed.

When she entered the workforce, she was a girl of 17; when she left it, retiring only because she could no longer drive herself to work, she was a grandmother of 90. In between these two bookends of her career were seventy-plus years of toil. Where others might have buckled under the weight of the dual demands of single-motherhood and full-time employment, Betty sought, not to lighten the load she carried, but to add to it. For three decades, she was both a full-time administrative assistant in America's premier military hospital, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and a part-time saleswoman at mid-century America's premier department store, Lord & Taylor. As if this occupational balancing act were not enough of a feat, she held down a third job for a few of these years, working as a transcriptionist for a nonprofit.

As could only be said of one of such grit and granite, Betty was what Shakespeare called "a tower of strength" and what the Bible called "a woman of valor." In more contemporary terms, long before "strong woman" and "independent woman" became American catchphrases in the 1980s, Betty Jordan provided the prototype. "My mother is my hero," proclaimed her daughter, Lynn Abramson, at Betty's ninetieth birthday celebration—words spoken by one, but a sentiment shared by all.

An example to aspire to was but a small part of what Betty gave to those close to her. Giving was the central theme of her life. From the outside, one may have wondered why she toiled so many hours, for so many years. Her lifestyle, after all, was modest to the point of self-deprivation. But her inner circle knew that it was the freedom to give–to provide for her daughter in her first decades and to spoil her grandchildren in her last–that was both the motive and the reward for all her unwearied labors.

If some are stingy both with themselves and with others, and others are generous with themselves but stingy with others, Betty moved among the rarest and noblest company of all: those who are tight-fisted with themselves so as to be open-handed with others. If her own loss would be a loved one's gain, there was no sacrifice, large or small, she would not make. Large was the sacrifice of being a single mother who worked three jobs at the same time. Small was the sacrifice of taking her grandson week after week to a restaurant that he loved but that she silently–and profoundly–disliked. Whatever the sacrifice, the instinct behind it was the same: to stint herself so as to lavish on others.

Betty's pleasures were few and simple: Chinese food, mahjong, a seat outside on a nice day, a cup of coffee just below boiling point, a shot of Grey Goose, a cover-to-cover examination of The Washington Post every morning. It was as if her love for her family was so vast that it crowded out all other affections.

And it is they, the family she leaves behind, who will forever keep the life of this extraordinary woman in cherished remembrance.

She is survived by her daughter, Lynn Abramson (David); her grandchildren Carly Kligler (Dave), Scott Abramson, and Adam Abramson (Sara); and her great-grandchildren Lexa and Logan Abramson, and Avery and Miles Kligler. She was predeceased by her sister, Adele Z. Penn. ז״ל