April 25, 1944 – February 3, 2000
Sr. Barbara was born in Baltimore, Maryland and raised in West Hartford, Connecticut. She earned degrees in education from St. John’s University and Adelphi University and also studied Spanish in Antigua and Guatemala and French in Belgium. Sr. Barbara taught at Nativity BVM, St. William the Abbot, where she introduced the CYO basketball program, and Holy Family High School, where she taught Phys Ed and coached the basketball, volleyball, and swim teams. As Sr. Jane Quinlan noted upon her death, “everything Barbara did was motivated by an awareness of God’s presence in each one, and a deep love of, marginalized people”. Sr. Barbara devoted her life to those who were underserved. She worked at Covenant House in New York, Guatemala, and Panama before she began her ten-year mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where, during the 1994 refugee crisis, she worked tirelessly to reunite separated children with their families. Sr. Barbara also ministered to those imprisoned, directed recreation programs for those with physical and mental challenges, and inner-city youth. At the time of her death she had been an Ursuline Sister of Tildonk for 36 years.