Barbara Jacqueline Ford

Doyle C Ford

59w ago

• She served as a mini skirted guineapig for instructors training at the Dennis Van Der Meer Tennis School, Hilton Island SC
• She hiked to about 12,000 ft elevation, near Vail CO, to have lunch on top of the world with old friends.
• She toured up and down the Pacific coast of California and tasted the wines of Napa Valley.
• She flew to Texas, while I was assigned there, to see the Alamo and on to Brenham where her favorite Blue Bell ice cream is made.
• She flew over the Atlantic non-stop, when I was working in Holland, to meet with my Dutch friends at the Royal Faust.
• She toured the Belgium lowlands she thought to be her family roots.
• She amazingly demonstrated fluent ‘Getting by in Deutschland’ when we toured the Romance Road of southern Germany.
• She enjoyed the great view of the White River from Jojo’s Catfish Wharf during a Ford family gathering in Mountain View Arkansas.
• She explored the red rock trails of Sedona in search of illusional vortex.
• In Helen GA, she had a hoot tubing down the Chattahoochee at age 89.
• She enjoyed the entertainment venues of Orlando, Branson, and Pigeon Forge. Bobby Vinton was her Blue Velvet dreamboat.

Although we commuted between Wilmington and our Rehoboth Beach house for several years, we opted for full time at the beach upon the onset of COVID. Since we had already established new friendships in the Woods at Seaside, she was happy living there and had no regrets for leaving her long-time family house:
• She was a backyard birdwatcher and kept an eye out for occasional wildlife such as, fox, deer, raccoon, skunk, groundhog, or turtle.
• In the absence of a garden, she no longer required frequent spinal injections for backpain.
• She was challenged by the Seaside Chef’s Cooking Club where a sit-down gourmet menu prevailed over casual homestyle comfort food.
• Her favorite drink was an occasional happy-hour Whiskey Sour at Fins Oyster House on the highway.
• She also savored a fresh squeezed Margarita at the Agave on Second Street in Lewes.
• She cared about nature, especially the plight of elephants, distressed sea turtles and the remaining gorillas in our mist.
She had an unfulfilled dream of having a horse. But, most people didn’t know that she also had a secrete bucket-list of admired personalities, namely:
- Peter Baker, Journalist (Name of old boyfriend)
- Al Roker, Weatherman (Replaced Willard Scott)
- Clint Watts, Security Analysts (Trusted protector)
- Mike Bettes, Weather Channel (Storm chaser)
- George Straight, Country Boy (Like me)
This bantering ceased a few weeks ago and her bucket list was trashed. It just wasn’t funny anymore, but still, she never expressed depressive thoughts. She was a very happy person, and it made her happy to make everybody else as happy as well. In the end, she wanted to be left alone to take care of herself in the comfort of her own home. She succumbed to the effects of aging, peacefully. Her family has lost a:
- Mother to Donna and David.
- Grandmother to Alex.
- Stepmother to Kathy and Paul.
- Step-grandmother to Lacey.
- Step great grandmother to Clyde and Hudson.
I have lost my wife, and I will surely miss her. You will miss her. We all will miss her. Her love was never in doubt.

Doyle C Ford

59w ago

In Memory of Barbara Ford, My Wife

Who was Barbara Jacqueline (Wilson) Marcus-Ford? Her obituary does not tell the whole story of her long happy and peaceful life. So, I have noted some memories that will help fill for in the emptiness of the tomorrows to come. I share this incomplete memoir and encourage others to add their memories as well.

In her youth, as related to me, she:
• Took tap dancing lessons and loved to dance.
• Played the part of either Yum-Yum, Peep Bo or Nankai Poo in the Mikado. She could still sing the silly words.
• Wanted to play saxophone in a band like her daddy.
• Wasn’t into sports but went on a one-time date to a Penn State football game at Happy Valley, PA.
• Posed as a sorority girl bathing beauty on the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk. Always loved being on the beach.
• Volunteered at the Delaware Humane Society animal shelter.
• Provided a home for stray dogs and abandon cats. She loved her yellow Lab “Peaches” and a white cat “Wiggie”, a name she frequently used as a unforgettable 6-letter password.
• Earned extra cash grooming puddles in her underground dog salon.

With our beginnings occurring over 600 miles apart, between Michigan and Delaware, it took us a long time to discover how much we had in common. Barbara and I were soul mates from the first time we met. On our first date, I took her to the Triple Nickle Saloon where we danced the Texas two-step to live good old country music. She was the love of my life and eventually became my wife for over 41 happy years.
• Barbara’s fashion was “preppy” and she was vainly proud of her “poodle” hair style.
• Her favorite B’way show was ‘Annie’.
• She was the Energizer bunny anxiously full of energy and eager impatience and was usually one step ahead of me.
• She was an unpredictable free spirit, full of surprises that often required that I right the overturned applecart.These attributes turned out to be a perfect fit and we married on June 10,1983 in a private ceremony with friends at the Dupont Country Club. It just so happened that a popular dance band was playing in the main ballroom that night. We did the bossa nova to ‘The Girl From Ipanema’.
Previously, we had taken ballroom dance lessons from Vince and Ginger Patterson at the Dupont Country Club and graduated to Level 12. So, shortly after the wedding, we tangoed with them on a dance class trip to Costa del Sol Spain and Grande Canary Island. That’s when I realized that she missed the “obey” part of our wedding vows and I soon learned that telling her that not to do something only made her more determined. Shortly afterward, she was encouraged to retire from her desk job:
• She took exercise classes and swam laps at the YMCA.
• She worked her flower gardens despite the severe back pain she endured and became an active member of the Hoe & Hope Garden Club.
• She delivered Meals on Wheels to seniors in need.
• She had fun doing the ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ and the ‘Boot Scootin’ Boogie’ during Line Dance nights at the Milltown Firehall.
• She spent hours by the fishpond water garden watching the colorful large koi foraging about.
• She enjoyed her morning giggle tennis with the girls that featured frequent cookie breaks to keep hydrated.
• She loved to travel and was a perfect traveling companion, but
only if she didn’t have to read or re-fold the roadmap.
• She was a Christian and attended various churches over time.

During our travels, she took a lot of pictures of the many vacation spots all over the USA. Her photography captured images of our numerous trips to places like the Florida Keys, Orlando, Myrtle Beach, Cape Cod, and the Great Smokey Mountains of Tennessee. She left me with this huge library of albums to enjoy lest I should forget our wonderful times together:
• She snorkeled the clear blue waters of the Bahamas. As a certified Scuba diver, she left me on deck while she explored the tropical waters of the Islamorada, Xanadu and Kona. (Continued)

Doyle C Ford

59w ago

In Memory of Barbara Ford, My Wife

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