Bette Hammel was in her 80s and thrilled at the prospect of flying high above Lake Minnetonka in a powered parachute to check out the homes she loved from the sky.

“She couldn’t wait to get in that thing and go up in the sky,” said Karen Melvin, who collaborated with her on books about architecture and felt differently about the flying cart contraption with a motor and parachute.

Family and friends said that love of adventure defined Hammel, a trailblazing ad professional and public relations consultant who became well known in Twin Cities architectural circles for her architecture writing and preservation advocacy. She died Nov. 23 at 99.

Hammel, who downhill skied at 80 and danced long into her 90s, wrote about architecture for local and national publications and authored several books on architecture and a memoir, some published into her 90s.

Her enthusiasm, pluck and charm drew people to her — and even got her into the wedding of movie star Grace Kelly.

“Her mission was to help educate people as to what architecture could bring to society and how really good architecture enhanced life,” said Daniel Avchen, a longtime friend, architect and former CEO of HGA, the firm co-founded by Hammel’s late husband, Dick Hammel.

Bette Marie Jones was born July 3, 1925, in St. Paul. She graduated from Humboldt High School and earned a journalism degree from the University of Minnesota.

“There is no saying ‘no’ to my mother,” her daughter Susan Hammel said. “When there was something she wanted, she went after it. And I think that sets her apart as a woman born in 1925.”

After graduating, she moved to Indiana, then New York to start a career in radio. She returned to Minnesota and began a career in radio and TV ads.

TV connections factored into one of Hammel’s biggest coups: attending the 1956 wedding of Grace Kelly and the prince of Monaco.

As her memoir tells it, Hammel would be in the area on a European ski trip, so she stopped by WCCO before departing and asked for a press pass. Enlisting a friend as a “photographer,” the two registered as press and filmed the wedding, socializing over champagne with international press at a Monte Carlo casino afterward. They sent the tape to WCCO, but it arrived too late to be used.

Susan Hammel was born when Bette was 39. The two were close, and Bette was “the absolute best mom ever,” her daughter said — and different from her friends’ moms.

“She was a working mom when that was not common,” she said.

Hammel’s memoir recounts an immediate attraction to esteemed architect Dick Hammel, whom she met at a dinner set up by mutual friends. The two were engaged within months of meeting and were married in 1970.

The couple moved into a house in Wayzata across from Lake Minnetonka in 1984, which brought easy access to a favorite pastime — exploring the lake by boat. Friends remember this house as the site of many annual “Undie Sunday” fundraisers for Interfaith Outreach, for which Hammel asked guests to bring packs of new underwear (and checks) to help people in need.

After Dick’s death in 1986, Bette’s interest in architecture seemed to blossom, Avchen said: “It was almost as if she felt she was carrying on his legacy.”

She became a freelance architecture journalist and wanted to make architecture understandable to regular people, Susan Hammel said.

“Her writing is not the typical architectural reviewer with jargon and technical facts. It’s more about how a building makes her feel,” she said.

Her travels often included points or people of architectural interest, such as a trip to China when she was about 80.

“She made the whole tour bus stop because she had arranged an interview with an architect in Shanghai,” Susan Hammel said.

Hammel, who authored “Legendary Homes of Lake Minnetonka” with photographer Melvin, and other books, was particularly troubled by the demolition of historic houses along her beloved Lake Minnetonka. She was horrified by the demolition of Southways, the historic Pillsbury mansion, in 2018.

“We’re losing the architectural history of the lake,” she told the Star Tribune in 2016, noting old homes’ replacement by “McMansions — houses that are overly gabled and extremely huge on the site.”

Former Wayzata Mayor Ken Willcox said Hammel was an active community leader and often had opinions, which she expressed with enthusiasm and a smile.

“One of her frustrations in Wayzata was people here wanted to preserve the small-town character and ‘charming architecture,’” Willcox said. “She really didn’t like the term ‘charming architecture’ because it was too unspecific and not actionable.’”

Hammel’s husband was the architect, but she was revered in her own right, her daughter said.

Susan Hammel remembered architects swarming around her mom at a university gathering. A university dean wondered who that lady was — and said he wanted to meet her, too.

“I told my mom that story later and just she said, ‘Oh no, it’s just because of Dick,’” who had been gone for more than 20 years by that time, Susan Hammel said. “I’m like, ‘No, mom, they love you, too.’”

Hammel is survived by daughter Susan Hammel and son-in-law Dan Broberg, grandchildren Danny and Caleigh, and stepchildren Anne Hammel and Stephen Hammel, among other family members and friends. A visitation and funeral Mass will be held Dec. 17 at St. Bartholomew’s Catholic Church in Wayzata.