Obituary of Barbara M. Weiner
Barbara – “That is B-A-R-B-A-R-A,” as she used to say – Helen Mowll Weiner died peacefully in her home on August 14, 2023. She leaves behind a legacy of dry wit, a family she loved fiercely and resolutely, including all canine and feline members, a collection of cookbooks complete with handwritten notes in the margins, a huge slide collection capturing her early years of marriage and motherhood, beautiful Christmas ornaments, a keen eye for grammar as well as the beauty in things and people, and a world marked by her purity and integrity.
Born in Natick, Massachusetts in 1927 to her loving parents Julia (Dee) Cook and Edward Mowll, she moved to Matthews, Virginia where she picked up a slight but most adorable southern twang, which she profited from when they moved to her childhood home of Atco, New Jersey, where kids paid to hear her accent.
With Atco as her home base, Barbara learned to play a mean softball, made the “big bucks” picking raspberries so she could purchase clothes from Sears & Roebuck, and attended Lower Camden County High School with her 27 classmates.
Then it was off to university, running out the backdoor of her Atco house each day to catch the train (often with a piece of toast in hand for breakfast), and then the ferry, followed by the bus, another bus, and then an eight-block walk to the University of Pennsylvania to earn her Bachelor’s degree in Occupational Therapy. Her years at Penn, summers as a counselor at Camp Green Lane, and the friends she made along the way were memories she treasured and reminisced about throughout her life.
While eating breakfast in a Washington, DC boarding house, she met her bashert, Dr. Frank Weiner, prior to him obtaining his medical degree. They talked of seeing the Philadelphia Symphony the night before, learned they were both from “Jersey,” exchanged numbers for rides home, followed by one date, and a proposal of marriage. Barbara allowed the proposal to gestate a bit and three weeks later gave a resounding yes. Theirs was a 59-year love story filled with respect, admiration, “heated” discussions, support, children they adored, and devotion to one another.
Marriage on January 29, 1958 began a full and busy life of medical school for Frank with Barbara typing all his notes on a manual typewriter, three children in three years, a menagerie of dogs, hamsters, guinea pigs, mice, rabbits, and varied injured wildlife, several moves, helping to open two medical practices in which Barbara took over as the bookkeeper and accountant, hours of volunteering (because as Barbara often said, “Volunteering is the heart of America”), deep friendships, retirement in North Carolina with lots of travel and visits to see family and friends, and moving to Houston, Texas as the last home for both Frank and Barbara.
On Barbara’s kitchen counter was a little wooden plaque with the words “dull women have clean homes,” and inside her Holiday Card address book she had written the following to herself: “If you asked what I came into this world to do, I would tell you that I came to live out loud.” Her strength and fearlessness were characteristics that she carried every day as a little girl, young woman, wife, and mother, in the days after Frank’s death, and up until her final breath. She was a planner always going the extra mile, planning events, holidays, parties, trips in their 21-foot trailer, and making birthdays special. Her greatest joy was her children, and she took on the responsibility of raising good, kind, ethical, and responsible human beings as her biggest and most important job. If asked what her greatest achievement was in life, she would say “My family.”
Barbara was preceded in death by her parents Julia (Dee) Cook Mowll and Edward Kingsford Mowll, and her husband Frank. She leaves having deeply touched the lives of her son Tim Weiner and his wife Meredith, daughter Jane Weiner and her husband Eric Mallory, daughter Susan Rafte and her husband Alan, her granddaughter Marika, her and Frank’s wonderful caregiver Agnes Williams and dozens of beloved four-legged companions.
In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in Barbara’s memory to:
Saving the Thai Street Dogs/Niall Harbison Dogs
https://donorbox.org/helping-thai-street-dogs-2
Hope Stone, Inc.
