2020

Barbara was born January 4, 1945 in Bay City, Michigan (no, she did not know Madonna). She received a Bachelors Degree in Journalism from the University of Michigan and worked for several newspapers in the Ann Arbor and Saginaw, Michigan area.

She and her good friend Dolores loaded all of their worldly goods into Barb’s green V.W. bug and set out to tour the United States planning to end up in San Francisco. I have been told that it was a good trip until they reached Tahoe where Dolores managed to break her leg skiing. This didn’t deter them but made the interior of bug even more crowded.

They found an apartment in San Francisco on Van Ness Avenue near auto row and were soon reemployed. Barbara as an editor of a trade magazine for the R.J. Cardinal Company and Dolores as a nurse at UCSF.

Barbara related an amusing story from their first weeks in San Francisco. They wanted to celebrate their arrival with a typical SF dinner, crab, French bread, white wine and artichokes. They found two crabs on the beach near Land’s End and bought the remainder of the meal at a local store. Neither of them had any idea on how to cook the artichokes except to boil them and it wasn’t for many years after that Barbara would ever look at one.

Barbara and I met at R.J. Cardinal where we both worked. When she left Cardinal to take a position as Assistant Editor and later editor for “San Francisco Business”, a SF Chamber of Commerce publication, we began dating.

I was heavily involved in SFR racing at the time and Barbara decided to come with me. She began working on the Course Marshall’s crew with Charlie and Judy Campbell and then switched to the Communications Crew. It was about this time that we were married.

Barbara left the Chamber of Commerce and began a long career with Safeway News in Oakland where she worked with Peter McGowen the CEO writing annual reports and Editing Safeway News.

Barbara became the Chief of Communications and worked in that capacity through the birth of our daughter, Erin. In addition to SFR events Barbara was asked to work the Long Beach and Las Vegas Grand Prix and the Curacao F3000 event in Race Control.

Barbara also originated and organized a crew unique to the SFR. She arranged for empty rooms at the race tracks we raced at and gathered volunteers from driver’s and worker’s wives and families and formed “Baby Central” providing day care facilities during race weekend days. As Erin grew older Barbara decided to retire from SCCA to make more time for her. Additionally, Erin was getting
involved in youth sports and Barbara became a soccer mom.

When Safeway changed due to the KKR Leverage Buyout Barbara left that world and started her own business “Get It Write”. She proof read, edited, did transcriptions and acted as a recording secretary for the San Leandro Planning Commission and the Portola Valley Planning Commission and Town Council.

Barbara suffered a major heart attack in 2008 and decided to slow down. She divested herself of her recording secretary jobs but continued odd jobs for old clients and slowly settled into Grandmotherhood. In early 2015 Barbara was diagnosed with COPD and Congestive Heart Failure.

In 2018 lung and ovarian cancer were added to the mix. She spent most of 2020 in hospitals and acute care facilities. She returned home in September 2020 and passed away October 9th.

One of Barbara’s biggest regrets of 2020 was the onset of the COVID-19 protocols which ended our monthly lunches with Linda and Jim Rogaski and some of my local relatives. She did enjoy Aaron our Son-In-Law’s barbeque skills and we had several very enjoyable barbeque lunches on our back deck with Erin and her family.

Barbara is survived by her two sisters Louanne and Terri and a myriad of nieces and nephews in Michigan, Erin and Aaron, Anjelica, Abigail and Alexander – our grandchildren, her step daughter Cathy and her two daughters Kendyll and Lindsey, my brother Tim and his two sons Ian and Cody and my sister Meriel and lastly, me.

— Dick Templeton