Billie Jane Becker Baguley, 1919-2012

BY ANN E. MARSHALL | DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH

Billie Jane Becker Baguley, for whom the Heard Museum’s Library and Archives is named, led a long life centered on learning, teaching and giving. She also had a wonderful sense of humor. When a reporter for The Arizona Republic approached 83-year-old Billie Jane for an interview, she was in the library trimming book pages with a pocketknife. As Angela Pancrazio, the reporter, approached, Billie Jane said, “Even though I have a knife in my hand, I’m not vicious.” Vintage Billie Jane. By the time of that interview in 2003, she had logged 11,000 volunteer hours in tasks that grew in importance as the library grew.

Billie Jane was born in Fresno, Calif., in 1919. Her father’s work as an engineer took the family to construction camps in the Sierra Nevada mountains. In 1922, William Becker moved the family to Phoenix, where he became a partner in the Phoenix Blue Print Company. Billie Jane attended Kenilworth Elementary School. She had childhood memories of the Heard Museum that included ringing a bell in order to be admitted through the gates by a caretaker. Other memories included attending with her mother an annual tea party and piano concert at the Heard and a 1930s program by Helen Keller.

A 1937 graduate of Phoenix Union High School, she continued her education at Phoenix College, where she began charting her course as a teacher. Her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education were both earned at Arizona State Teacher’s College (now Arizona State University), from which she graduated in 1943. Following graduation, she taught at Tempe Union High School and Casa Grande High School.

During her studies, a summer program at the University of Nottingham in England left an impression on her that led her to return to Nottingham for further study and teaching in 1948. She returned briefly to Phoenix in 1955 upon her father’s death to run and sell the family business, which became Thomas Reprographics. Her father had hoped she would continue the business, but Billie Jane was still enjoying her life in England. She returned to Nottingham and teaching at Bradgate School for Girls. In Nottingham she met wine merchant Peter Baguley, whom she married in 1957.

Upon Peter’s retirement in 1975, the couple returned to Phoenix, and by 1978 both were volunteering at the Heard Museum, Peter as a guide and Billie Jane in the library. She chaired various committees which ensured that a growing cadre of volunteers was trained in the various collections of the library. In the late 1980s, she began a library fund in her parents’ names for the purchase of books, contributing $100 a month. That was just the beginning of her giving.

Her impressive donations of time and money led to the Heard’s 2000 dedication of the library and archives in her name: the Billie Jane Baguley Library and Archives. That 2003 Arizona Republic newspaper interview by Angela Pancrazio quoted Library and Archives Director

Billie Jane Baguley and former Heard Museum Director Frank H. Goodyear listen as Library and Archives Director Mario Nick Klimiades announces the dedication of the library and archives in Baguley’s name, making it officially The Billie Jane Baguley Library and Archives. The event was celebrated with a ribbon cutting ceremony.