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Some people see Betty Gale Sikes, dressed in her colonial costume, as Dolley Madison when she gives historical presentations to school children and in the community. Others see her as a volunteer at Wesley Long Community Hospital. Still others see her as a volunteer at the Greensboro Historical Museum.

She wears many hats, and everything she does, she does exceptionally well.

Sikes has been a volunteer at Wesley Long since March 1961, and she looks forward to receiving her 50-year pin in less than two years.

When asked to describe Sikes, her peer volunteers call her calm, friendly, upbeat and positive regardless of the situation at hand, said Robert Bessey, volunteer director of Wesley Long and Moses Cone hospitals.

“She has adopted Wesley Long and the volunteer department as her second family, and we will forever be grateful to Betty Gale Sikes for all that she has done as a hospital volunteer over many years,” Bessey said.

Her husband, Dr. T. Edgar Sikes Jr., was on the staff at Wesley Long when it opened, and he told Sikes the hospital would need volunteers to help with many tasks. Sikes went to the hospital and told the director she was available to help. She has been a Wesley Long volunteer ever since. She used to work every week but has now cut her schedule back to two or three times a month.

A charter member of the Greensboro Historical Museum Guild, which she joined in1975, she has served twice as guild president and has served on the board of trustees off and on since the early 1980s.

Perhaps Linda Evans, the head of community history, best captured the varied ways and many contributions Sikes has made to the museum during the past 35 years when she said:

“One way to think about Betty Gale’s service to the historical museum would be to think of it as a newsreel. The opening shots would feature her and a small group of women determined to make a difference. They take on projects from founding a museum shop to helping with tours. They sew costumes, plant herbs, demonstrate colonial cooking, welcome guests for special events and research all kinds of topics.

“Betty Gale has taken a special interest in leading museum tours for school groups for many years. Flash forward a bit, and you’ll see her visiting countless Greensboro classrooms, talking about famous people, in a way so lively and engaging that the youngsters feel like these heroes and heroines are right there with them.

“Weave images from other venues, from years as a museum guild officer and museum trustee, and you see how Betty Gale has shared her love of American history with literally thousands of people. She’s really the best kind of ambassador a local history organization can have,” Evans said.

Sikes enjoyed the study of history and especially learning more about Greensboro and its beginnings. She has served as a docent, either in the museum itself or as a trouper with a “traveling trunk.”

“I love going to the schools and sharing my trunk with the children,” Sikes said.

Dressed in her colonial costume, she likes to bring to life historical figures such as Dolley Madison, O. Henry, Gov. John Motley Morehead, David Caldwell and Charles Henry Moore, an almost-forgotten black educator who was responsible for the establishment of Bennett College in Greensboro. She gives little-known facts, such as that Moore was responsible for raising money for L. Richardson Hospital, which was once an African American hospital.

Fred Goss, director of the Greensboro Historical Museum, has great praise for Betty Gale and Ed Sikes.

“I have found Betty Gale to be one of the best advocates and ambassadors for the museum since my arrival here in 2004,” he said. “She and Ed are shining examples of the value of volunteers to a nonprofit institution.”

Sikes was born in Greensboro and lived at the corner of West Market Street and Edwardia Drive. Her maiden name was Edwards, and Edwardia Drive, cut through her grandfather Edwards’ farm, so the street was named for him. She was taught by her mother to crochet and knit even before she started to school.

She graduated from Guilford College with a degree in psychology and worked in personnel and later as a social worker for the Department of Public Welfare in Baltimore.

She and her husband knew each other in high school, but did not date until years later. He was an oral surgeon in Greensboro for 40 years and is now retired. They have been married for 60 years and have three children and five grandchildren.

Sikes said she and her husband believe people owe a certain amount of service to the community in which they live.

Ed Sikes also volunteers at the historical museum and has worked with the Boy Scouts for many years. He received the Silver Beaver and Silver Antelope awards in recognition of his service to the Scout program.

Sikes said she looks forward to each day and loves to hear the telephone ring because “I know someone is thinking about me.” She believes in exercise and tries to walk at least 40 minutes each day.

“I love and enjoy my friends, and we have fun together playing bridge, golf, discussing books we are reading or bragging about our grandchildren,” Sikes said.

Sikes has a simple and beautiful philosophy of life.

“I try to live every day to the fullest and am thankful that God has given me another day in this beautiful country to enjoy and try to live in a way that pleases him.”

To nominate a person a person who has or is making a difference in the lives of others, contact Peggy Longmire at 288-9040 or rlongmire@triad.rr.com