The donor, Marjorie Lighton (usually called Betty), was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, 15 November 1912. She graduated from the College of Industrial Arts (now Texas Women's University) in Denton, Texas, with a major in speech in 1934. That summer she traveled across the country with her mother and sister Suzanne, visiting the Nine Bar Ranch in Wyoming and her brother Louis in Hollywood. Betty Lighton worked for the Triangle Producing Company of Greensboro, North Carolina, in the summer of 1937, producing "home talent" plays--a sort of community theater--and also directed Blackfriar plays at the University of Arkansas. She performed and taught dancing in Fayetteville, was a legal secretary, took radio and speech courses at Northwestern University (summer 1939), and was a court reporter before joining the Red Cross during World War II. In the Red Cross she served at O'Reilly General Hospital, Springfield, Missouri; Camp Crowder Station Hospital, Neosho, Missouri; Bruns General Hospital, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Fitzsimons General Hospital, Denver, Colorado; and traveled throughout fourteen states as Recreation Consultant. Her eyesight began to fail (she and Louis Lighton had the same disability), and she began to seek a career that she could handle with her disability. She worked for the Girl Scouts as a Council Advisor, working out of the Regional Office in Memphis, Tennessee, then was Executive Director of the Knoxville (Tennessee) Girl Scout Council (later enlarged to an Area Council, Tanasi Girl Scout Council). She won a fellowship from the American Foundation for the Blind to the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Social Work, Nashville, 1958-1960, doing field work at the Senior Citizens' Center and the Council of Community Agencies there. After graduation she became Associate Executive Director of the YWCA, Dayton, Ohio, until her retirement back to Fayetteville in 1964.