Elizabeth Ann “Betty” (Cullen) Fink, 80, of Orlando Florida, passed away on June 26,2022 after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease.
Betty was the only child of the late James and the late Marian (Corrigan) Cullen of Bridgeport, Connecticut. She graduated from Notre Dame Catholic High School, attended Boston College, and received her nursing diploma from Yale-St. Rafael’s School of Nursing in New Haven, Connecticut. Following service in several New York City hospitals, culminating in being an Emergency Room Supervisor at Belleview Hospital, Betty returned to New Haven to earn her certification in anesthesia from Yale-St. Rafael’s Anesthesia School. While working as a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA) at St. Raphael’s Hospital in New Haven, she met Lee, the love of her life, a dashing naval submarine officer then stationed at the Submarine Base in New London, Connecticut. They married in 1974 in the (Roman Catholic) Church of the Assumption in Fairfield CT.
Betty and Lee followed his naval career to Charleston, South Carolina, where their first two children were born. The couple moved to the Atlantic City suburb of Northfield, New Jersey in 1979. It was during that time that their third child was born and Betty received her BS (Psychology) from Stephens College (Columbia, Missouri) and her Master of Science (Psychological Counselling) degree from Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, while she worked as a CRNA and later as a crisis counsellor in Atlantic City and Lakewood, NJ. In 1993 the family moved to Chillicothe, Ohio, where Betty continued her counselling work, and later to Paducah, Kentucky in 2001 and to Orlando in 2014.
Betty is survived by her husband, Lee, of Orlando, and her daughters Mary (Grant) Clymer of O’Fallon, Illinois and Ginny (Andy) Jacobson of Orlando, and grandsons Ryan and Sean Mahan of Ardmore, Oklahoma, Aidan Clymer of O’Fallon, Illinois, and James, Caleb, Noah, and Matthew Jacobson, all of Orlando. She was pre-deceased by her parents James and Marian Cullen of Bridgeport, Connecticut and son James S. Fink of Charleston, South Carolina.
A service will be held July 6 at 10:00am in Celebration Community Church in Celebration FL, with Pastor Benny Phillips of Redeemer Church officiating. Interment will follow at Cape Canaveral National Cemetery.