Soprano, Social Worker & Blues Cruiser

At the tender age of 11, few of us know what we want to be when we grow up. Betty Dayron is the exception: she knew she wanted to be a social worker, and she went on to fulfill her dream in a 43-year career with the agency now known as JCFS Chicago. She continued to practice her profession in retirement, serving as volunteer field instructor for future social workers at Lincoln Park Village (now The Village Chicago).

Betty set her career goal during her first summer at Camp Willoway in Bear Mountain, New York. “Unlike at home, at camp I was just a kid who wasn’t the center of the universe,” she said. “The camp counselors were social workers and somehow I knew that was a good thing to be.” She returned to Willoway every summer, becoming a counselor-in-training along the way. In that role, she learned that history could come back to haunt you. “I remember one time I was telling the kids they shouldn’t write on the walls, and they pointed to one that was inscribed ‘Betty.’ They’d found me out!”

Continuing on her chosen path, Betty enrolled at Brandeis University. As the daughter of a single mom (her father had died in an auto accident not long after Betty was born), she said, “I needed a lot of money, and Brandeis offered me the most. But what a good choice!” Majoring in psychology, Betty studied with Abraham Maslow, renowned in the field as the creator of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, among other innovations that brought new thinking to the practice of psychology. While she was at Brandeis, the university established a Phi Beta Kappa chapter and Betty was among the charter members. She went on to graduate school at the University of Chicago, then launched her career with JCFS. Of her time there, Betty says, “I was very lucky to be able to be in one place and do lots of different things. I did counseling. I supervised students. I did administrative work. And I did a lot of work in resettlement of refugees from Indochina, Russia, and Bosnia.”

Over the course of her career, Betty experienced changes in the profession—changes she wasn’t always comfortable with. “When I began working at JCFS, it was a family-focused practice. That meant you figured out what the clients needed, and you helped them get it: ‘Why are they here? What do they want? What do they need?’ It was a descriptive diagnosis, not a psychiatric diagnosis. We were required to see the whole family of a client within the first five interviews. So we would have a perspective. If you were seeing a young adult who said, ‘My parents are horrible,’ you would have met them and had your own view of what was going on. Clinical social work today is much more narrowly defined than what we were doing, which was helping people to help themselves.”

As volunteer field instructor at Lincoln Park Village, Betty mentored graduate students from Loyola University’s School of Social work. She encouraged her charges to take a broader view. “I would tell them, ‘This is not a clinical setting. We are not diagnosing and treating, we are understanding and helping. Start where the client is, figure out what they need and how you are going to help them.’ I used to say the primary criteria for being a social worker is basic nosiness. You have to want to know ‘how come’ and ‘why.’”

One of the Loyola students, Niki Fox, joined the village staff and became Betty’s colleague as co-supervisor of social work interns. “I grew together with her in this role,” Ms. Fox recalls. “Betty demonstrated good practices that I adopted. We had honest conversations about the work. She made a point to allocate time for conversations outside of work. She demonstrated what it means to ‘be present.’  She knew when to push me and challenge me.” The challenge must have paid off, as Ms. Fox is now the executive director of The Village Chicago.

Memories abound from a career spanning almost 50 years, but one that is precious to Betty concerns a client she served early on. “He was in his 80s, living on welfare in public housing. At some point we started talking about how he had relatives in New York that he had lost touch with. I found them on the internet, and with his permission, I wrote letters to them. And they wrote him letters back. That was super.”

Betty’s childhood experience at Camp Willoway not only inspired her career path, but it also seeded her lifelong love of music, especially folk and blues. This is not surprising, since the camp was located near the home of Pete Seeger. Although Betty never met Seeger, his music was part of her camp experience, and she saw him perform with Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall. As a high school student she became a regular at the Sunday afternoon folk concerts and sing-alongs in New York’s Washington Square. As a graduate student at the University of Chicago, she became a student of the blues. Since 1992 she’s been joining other aficionados on an annual blues cruise. “It’s a Caribbean cruise on a chartered ship. There are 30 bands.”

Betty’s just back from the 2025 cruise: “I spent most of the week standing up and dancing.”  She also renewed her acquaintance with Taj Mahal, the American blues musician who is still entertaining audiences at age 82. “I have several photos of us through the years,” Betty said with a chuckle. “I told him I’m recording our aging process.” Mr. Mahal had to leave the cruise early this year so that he could attend the Grammy Awards, where he was honored for Best Traditional Blues Album—his 11^th Grammy—for “Swingin’ Live at the Church in Tulsa.”

Like many Sounds Good singers, Betty has roots in choral singing going back to her school days. “I used to be a descant soprano, now I’m just a soprano,” she said with a chuckle. She joined the Gold Coast choir in 2018 at the invitation of Susan Stodolsky, a chorister who’s been a friend since sixth grade. “I heard the summer session was rock ‘n roll, and that was perfect. I loved it, and I’ve been singing with Sounds Good ever since.” After moving to The Admiral at the Lake, Betty joined the effort to bring Sounds Good to the Admiral, where the choir is now in its second season under the direction of conductor Amy Wurtz.

Drawing on her social work experience, Betty says singing is an “essential experience” for older adults. “The lyrics from songs you heard years ago stay in your head. Some people who have no memory whatsoever come to the music programs here and they know all the words. There’s a feeling of joy that’s so important.”