Vera Bennett Metzger

Vera’s early childhood was marked by poverty in West Virginia where she was the youngest of four children, to parents; Guy and Willa (Minear) Keller. As a late-in-life surprise she hardly knew her siblings, and she has been full of surprises ever since. She finished High School in Cleveland, Ohio where she was an excellent student.

Vera soon married and helped her then husband through graduate school and had her first daughter, Elizabeth. The family moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where she had her second daughter Susan. After a friend gave her a ticket to the Santa Fe Opera, she became an opera lover. When her daughters were teenagers, her marriage broke up as they sometimes do, and she worked as the office manager of a small high-tech company. After the company moved to Florida, Vera found employment at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. She always told her bosses not to expect her to remember anything they said before 10 A.M. According to her, “If God had wanted her to be awake at sunrise, He would have scheduled it later in the day.”

As an office manager she made sure that scientists handled classified documents properly. Also, she shipped their equipment to far off places for field operations. As an editor she stood up to the know-it-all scientists, who very often abused the English language.

Vera met her now husband Dan at a local swimming pool. He approached her to buy a pair of opera tickets to take another lady to the opera. Friendship ensued as she thought a guy, who carried a Snoopy lunch box, wouldn’t take himself too seriously. Later she married the lucky fellow after her girls were off to college. Vera soon perceived that she needed to help Dan and take custody of his teenage son Daniel, who now lives with his wife and their family in Chapel Hill and has been a very big part of Vera's life.

Vera and Dan had a common interest in the outdoors. So hiking, backpacking, and skiing had them visiting the mountains of New Mexico, Colorado and Montana. Vera is a veteran of two backpacking trips to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Tiring of the “Company Town” atmosphere, Dan and Vera moved to a new home in Santa Fe and commuted to work in Los Alamos until retirement in 1993. As the appeal of mountain heights waned, Dan took up flyfishing, which Vera thought was silly, but she enjoyed walking along the paths that followed the rivers that Dan was fishing in. She enjoyed the easier walking as her mobility was constrained due to Parkinson’s Disease.

Following their local family’s advice, they moved in 2017 to Chapel Hill, where Vera found easy hiking in the Carolina North Forest which is 750 acres of woodlands located on the University of North Carolina's North Campus. Fortunately, their new home at Searstone offered an ideal environment for retirement for them both and Vera found comfort and much needed care while at Brittany Place. She could be found “hiking” around the halls in her wheelchair and giving out her hellos and smiles to everyone.

Vera is survived by her loving husband Daniel "Dan" Metzger, her children: Elizabeth Bausman, Susan Bennett, Megan Forest, and Daniel Metzger. Her three grandchildren and one great-grandchild. The family will be having a private memorial at a later date. In lieu of flowers the family suggest a contribution to either a local opera house or to a charity of your own choice in honor of Vera. Memorial tributes and messages of sympathy can be left by clicking the "Add a Memory" box below. Brown Wynne of Cary is honored to serve the Metzger family.