The pretty girl that Robbie Rose, chief of the Washington Fire-Rescue-EMS Department, wanted identified is Betty Jane Cox of Plymouth.

“It didn’t quite turn out the way we wanted it to,
Rose said Monday of the identification process. “Her son called and told us she died last year in September at 64. We wish she were still alive. We could have brought her back to the station and taken more pictures.”

Cox was about 16 or 17 when the photograph of her on the Washington fire engine was taken, Rose said. Cox was the reigning Miss Water Festival (Plymouth) and Miss Independence (Belhaven) when the photograph was taken, according to her son.

The photograph of Cox on the Washington fire engine was taken by Daden Wolfe, a former firefighter and a former Beaufort County emergency-management director, now deceased. Apparently, Wolfe was related to Cox’s mother, possibly a cousin, according to Rose.

“This picture was taken on the old ladder truck that was replaced in 1973 by the snorkel. She is wearing the fire chief’s helmet and in the background you can see the sign for the old ESSO station,” Rose wrote in an email.

The Esso station’s sign can be seen in the background to the upper left of the search light.

When she died, she was known as Mary Jane Cox Lybrand. She was married to William Martin Lybrand when she died. She owned Healing Hands Massage Therapy in Plymouth. She had three sons, a daughter and six grandchildren, one who preceded her in death. She had a sister and a brother.