Betty Ann Brooks

Betty Ann Brooks M.D., 94, died peacefully on April 24 at The Oaks in Athens, GA. Dr. Brooks was born May 22, 1921 in Charlotte, N.C. to Lucile and Fred Brooks.

Betty Ann grew up in Decatur, GA graduating from Decatur Girls High, Agnes Scott College (1942), and was one of only three women to earn her Medical Degree in 1948 at Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. She ran a happy and successful OB/GYN practice in Decatur for 33 years delivering 100's of babies. Dr. Brooks was a Renaissance woman with numerous passions and talents including boating, water skiing, fishing, cooking, gardening, playing the accordion and piano, the Metropolitan Opera, her family's genealogy, raising Cocker Spaniels, and even taking up snow skiing late in life! She loved her family and numerous friends and was a gracious host for parties and family celebrations. Betty Ann was a devout Presbyterian her entire life.

After semi-retiring to St. Simons Island in 1985, she continued her medical practice part-time treating HIV/AIDS patients in multiple southeast GA counties for another 14 years until she was 79 years old. These efforts led to her earning the Outstanding Alumna Award for Service to the Community from Agnes Scott College in 2008. Another late life avocation was studying her family's genealogy, and in 2011 she wrote and published a book about her family titled From Riverboats to Confederate Navy to Knighthood—A True Southern Family History.

She is lovingly survived by her nieces; her nephews; five grand nieces and nephews, three great grand nieces and nephews; and her beloved Cocker Spaniel Higgins.