I was fortunate to get to know Barbara back in the late 70's, early 80's working with her at the Green Thumb Greenhouses. She had a way of making us laugh often, but the following will always stand out: 

Barbara and Vera were already in the break area preparing coffee for all employees. Barbara was always good that way- taking care of the rest of us. On that particular morning, a different co-worker had filled the coffee maker with "water" and coffee, so Barbara just had to turn it on.  Prior to my arrival, they had poured their coffees and added cream. The cream curdled in their cups.  A group of us arrived at this time and overheard them discussing how upset they were that the cream had gone by so fast. It had been recently purchased, but they threw out the "bad" cream anyhow. Another co-worker took a sip of his black coffee and practically spit it out, because it tasted awful.  People started putting the pieces together as to what went wrong. Turned out a young girl, who could best be described as "out there"(She also claimed to see eagles in the greenhouse one time when the vents were all closed), decided to clean the coffee maker with vinegar early that morning. Unfortunately she did not flush the machine out with water, she just left the vinegar in the coffee maker. At this point Barbara is in disbelief that anyone would do such a thing.  In her humerous way she was recapping what had happen. Just as she had us all in stitches laughing,our boss, Bob McGoldrick came in extremely angry about something that went wrong related to the businesss. This was not the time to be laughing. We had to stiffle our laughs immediately and none of us could make any eye contact for fear of errupting into another roar of laughter! Barbara was fun to be around!

I feel fortunate that she was in my life during those years.

Sorry for your loss,

Gail (Keleher) Hamm