Betty Ann Copley

Betty Ann Copley, 87, of Gray, Georgia, passed away on Sunday, February 22, 2026. A funeral service will be held at Hart’s Mortuary, Jones County Chapel on Friday, February 27, 2026, beginning at 2:00 in the afternoon. Her family will host a time of visitation beginning one hour prior to the service, in the same location. Burial will be private.

Betty Ann Copley was born on September 3, 1938, in Tennille, Georgia to the late Tommy Edward and Evelyn Irene Walden. Betty graduated from Wilkinson County High School in 1956. After graduating high school, she moved to Macon, Georgia and lived at the YWCA and worked at Commercial Credit Corporation of Macon.

She met her future husband Billy Joe Copley at the USO Club in Macon, Georgia. After she and Billy married, they moved to California and lived there for fifty years before moving back to Gray, Georgia. Betty loved spending time with her grandsons and great-grandchildren.

Betty loved doing counted cross stitch pictures, reading romance novels, traveling around the USA, and cruising the Caribbean, the Panama Canal, Central America, Columbia, South America, and Alaska. She also enjoyed going to concerts to see ZZ Top (twice), Elton John, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, George Thorogood, The Pointer Sisters, Dolly Parton with special guests Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, Little Richard and various other country singers and rock and roll singers in the late 1950s.

Betty was a housewife; she went back to work when her daughter was a teenager. Betty worked at SCI Finance in Ontario, California. When SCI Finance was acquired by Beneficial Finance, Betty worked for them at their offices in Rialto and San Bernardino, California until she was laid off. In 1982, Betty then went to work with State Farm Insurance until she retired in 2004. While at State Farm Insurance, Betty worked at the Montclair Claims Service Center, the Ontario Claims Service Center, the Rancho Cucamonga Claims Service Center, and the Rancho Cucamonga Operations Center, all in California.

Betty will be dearly missed by her family and friends. Betty is survived by her daughter, Rebecca Beeman (Joseph), of Gray, Georgia; her grandsons, Daniel Beeman, of Tallahassee, Florida; Matthew Beeman (Morgan), of Macon, Georgia; her great grandchildren, Lucas James Beeman and Spencer Anne Beeman. Additionally, she is survived by her sister, Lucile Couey, of Toomsboro, Georgia, and her brother, Bobby Walden, of Milledgeville, Georgia. She is preceded in death by her husband of sixty-five years, William “Billy Joe” Joseph Copley, as well as her parents, Tommy Edward and Evelyn Irene Walden; her sister-in-law, Shirley Walden; and her brother-in-law, Jerald Couey.

Please visit www.hartsmort.com to express condolences.

Hart’s Jones County Chapel, Hart's Mortuary and Cremation Center, 307 Pecan Lane, Gray, GA 31032 has charge of the arrangements.