Elizabeth Thomas, 85, a therapist who ran Hoedown Hall

She had him at do-si-do.

The end of World War II set off a square-dancing craze, and Elizabeth Moses, an occupational therapy student of Quaker stock, kicked up her heels, twirled her pettiskirts, and joined in. At a hoedown in Philadelphia, she circled left and circled right into the path of her future husband.

She and lawyer Charles Thomas later settled on a 13-acre Deptford farm and turned it into a square-dance Xanadu.

Hoedown Hall opened in the early 1950s, first in the Thomases' barn and then in an outbuilding with a floor reinforced to take a pounding from 150 or more feet on Saturday nights. It became the largest such venue in South Jersey.

After 35 years, when age and the allemande no longer mixed, the couple moved to a continuing-care community in Medford.

On Monday, Jan. 21, Mrs. Thomas, 85 and a widow for two decades, died of Alzheimer's disease at Medford Leas.

There was far more to "Biz" Thomas than fleet feet and frills.

The Plainfield, N.J., native was sent to George School in Bucks County, where she graduated in 1944. She got her occupational therapy license in a nondegree program at the University of Pennsylvania, but marriage in 1947, four children, and Hoedown Hall intervened.

Only in 1960 did Mrs. Thomas take up her career, first as an occupational therapist at the Cerebral Palsy Center in Glassboro, then at various South Jersey nursing homes.

In 1967, she went to work at Philadelphia General Hospital, rising to chief of the occupational therapy department. When the hospital closed in 1977, she took the same post at the Philadelphia Nursing Home.

Along the way, she developed a specialty in hand therapy. She also took care of some unfinished business: her education. She took night classes at Penn, earning her bachelor's degree in 1975. From Drexel University, she got a master's.

From 1986 until she retired in 1996, Mrs. Thomas worked for various health-care organizations, including Virtua Memorial in Mount Holly, and taught part time at what was then Atlantic Community College.

Above all, Mrs. Thomas was a Quaker, inspired from childhood by her faith, said her son, Charles Jr. She was a member, and often clerk, of Woodbury Friends Meeting, and was active in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and the Friends World Committee.

In liberal-bent Quakerism, there was wiggle room for "Lady Walpole's Reel." Religion and square dancing "defined who they were," her son said.

After her husband died in 1992, Mrs. Thomas sold the property. The land on which it sat is now a soccer field.

In addition to her son, Mrs. Thomas is survived by daughters Elizabeth, Marjorie, and Charlotte; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

A memorial service is set for 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 24, at Woodbury Friends Meeting, 124 N. Broad St. Interment there will be private.

Contributions may be made to the Jonathan E. Rhoads Fund for Tuition Aid for Friends Children in Friends Schools, 1515 Cherry St., Philadelphia 19102, with checks made payable to Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.