But ask who she has enjoyed working with the most and she you will tell you "I love teaching the midshipmen." "And the kids," she adds, referring to generation after generation of young Annapolitans she has introduced to the art of dancing for the past 47 years.

So how did this veteran of stage and screen end up in Annapolis? The answer, strangely enough, lies within the walls of the Naval Academy.

In 1949, Betty Slabe, a 29-year-old veteran of Hollywood movie stages and Broadway musical productions, was performing in a club in her hometown of Minneapolis when Navy Lt. William Huckenpoehler stopped by for a beer.

"There were three girls in the show," she says. "A blonde, a brunette and a redhead. Bill asked the master of ceremonies to introduce him to the brunette. "That was me."

Initially, when told a young Navy officer wanted to meet her, she wasn't interested.

"I was a twit," she says. "You know, flip."

When the young lieutenant told her his last name, Huckenpoehler, she said "you've got to be kidding."

Betty was pretty, vivacious and had the kind of gams that used to grace the fuselage of WWII bombers.

She had all kinds of boyfriends, but never took any of them seriously. "Every time I went with a fella they bought me a watch. And I didn't give two hoots about a watch."

But Lt. Huckenpoehler was different. "He was soft-spoken," she recalls. "A gentle soul."

And like any good officer, he was persistent. Bill Huckenpoehler convinced Betty to go out to dinner with him and then asked whether she wanted him to dress military or civilian.

"What a question" she laughs. "I said I didn't care."

But she soon did care very much for the soft-spoken officer. They stayed in touch after his return to Annapolis and started a long-distance courtship.

And eventually, instead of a watch, he sent her a "miniature," the smaller version of the Naval Academy class ring traditionally given by midshipmen to their steady girls. "It was my engaged to be engaged ring," she said.

Bill invited Betty down to Annapolis. She stayed in a "drag house," one of the many rooming houses in town that boarded "drags," the nickname given the girls the midshipmendated. "They were much stricter in those days," Betty recalls. "You couldn't just book a hotel like today."

The house, located on the corner of Prince George and Randall Streets, was across from an old ice cream parlor that used to sell ice cream by the pound (now the site of The Moon Cafe).

During her stay there, she got to know Josie Florestano, the proprietor, who remained a dear friend over the years.

The big city girl and Hollywood dancer liked Annapolis just fine. "It was charming," she says. "A lovely small town." After living out of a steamer trunk for the past 15 years, she was ready to settle down. But first her officer had to drop anchor. After his assignment teaching at the academy, William Huckenpoehler was stationed on the USS Strong based out of Norfolk and assigned to a world cruise. Finally, in 1955, Lt. William Huckenpoehler and Betty Slabe were married. After two years in Ecuador, they moved to Annapolis, where her husband took a job as an engineering professor at the Naval Academy.

The Huckenpoehlers settled into a seven-room home on Fairfield Road surrounded by acres and acres of woods, which later were destroyed to build Aris T. Allen Boulevard. "When we moved there, it was the boonies," Betty says. "So quiet and peaceful."

Times were tough for the young couple raising a family on a professor's salary. As she puts it, "we were living from bologna to bologna."

Before marriage, Betty had been a dance instructor and master teacher for Fred Astaire at his Fred Astaire Dance Studios (one of only 35 dancers personally chosen by Mr. Astaire to teach at his studios).

So in 1958, when her neighbor told her that the Anne Arundel County Recreation Department was looking for a ballroom dancing instructor, she jumped at the chance. Lessons were held for 25 cents per class. At the first class, only three people showed up, but Betty told them, "If you enjoyed the class, spread the word. " At the next lesson, so many people showed up there was no room for them all.

Thus began a long career of teaching Annapolis to dance. Groups of couples, from Earleigh Heights to Bay Ridge, called on Betty to come to their community centers or neighborhood living rooms to teach.

Then, in 1960, Betty Lazenby Richbourg asked if she would teach children to dance at The Annapolis Cotillion, held at the time at the old Carvel Hall (a hotel located in what is now part of the Paca Gardens). The cotillion had been started a decade earlier by Mrs. Richbourg's mother and Mildred Duvall to teach dancing and social graces to young people. Betty joined the team and has continued the tradition now for over 47 years.

That same year, Betty began teaching ballroom dance to the midshipmen at the Naval Academy. Dance was a required course for all plebes, a practice in place from almost the very start of the institution.

In fact, in the 1860's, Admiral Porter stressed the importance of the social graces so much that students at St. John's started calling the Academy "Admiral Porter's Dancing Academy."

But there was one small problem for a dance instructor at the Naval Academy. Before females were admitted to the Yard, plebes were not allowed to fraternize with young women, except in dance class. It was Betty's job not only to teach fox trots and waltzes, but to find the young ladies to serve as dancing partners.

Betty arranged to bring girls in on buses from D.C. or Baltimore. "We were told that the girls had to be from at least 15 miles away," Betty says, "and not from Glen Burnie."

A recent sea change at the Academy did away with the decades-long tradition of dance instruction. But Betty continues to teach, on a volunteer basis, the midshipmen who are part of the dance team for the International Ball, an event held each year to honor foreign midshipmen and officers.

And at age 87, she still commands the floor at the Annapolis cotillion, training young people ages 10 to 15 to step, step, turn and conduct themselves like ladies and gentlemen. With more than 200 children in attendance at any one time, it can be a challenge. But Betty moves through the crowd with the focus and discipline of a military officer.

Her Hollywood career may have been fun and exciting, but it's teaching that has made her a star in the eyes of so many. "Many years later," she says, "the kids that I've taught will come back and tell me 'I had to go through a receiving line or I had to greet people or ask someone to dance, and I always thank Betty Huckenpoehler for knowing what to do.' "

More than the movies, the dancing and the glittering life of a Hollywood performer, this is what gives her the greatest satisfaction. Betty says of her teaching, "It makes me feel like I've really done something."

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Janice Gary is an award-winning writer of creative nonfiction. She teaches memoir at Annapolis Senior Center. These stories are personal recollections and as such, are subject to time, memory and point of view. Do you have an Annapolis story? Contact jangary22@hotmail.com.