Barbara Dawes Vogl

A celebration of Barbara Vogl's life will be held August 29, 2009 from 1:45 to 5:00 pm at Inner Light Ministries, 5630 Soquel Drive, Soquel, CA. She passed peacefully June 8, 2009 at the age of 84.

Barbara was born in Beloit, Wisconsin and lived in Soquel, CA for the past 41 years. She trained as a registered nurse at the University of Wisconsin and was a public health nurse with her late former husband, Dr. Charles Vogl in Bowman, North Dakota, a community of about 500 people with the nearest doctor or hospital 100 miles away. She learned to fly a small plane which took them to farm houses to deliver babies in the middle of the winter when people couldn't get into town.

With her young children, she lived for two years in Lausanne, Switzerland and travel extensively throughout Europe and later visited China.

She graduated with honors from University of California, Santa Cruz with a degree in cultural anthropology and did graduate work at UC Berkeley in Folklore. She received a Masters in Education and worked in public school alternative programs. She helped start the Free University out of which the Santa Cruz Community Free School developed.

In addition to being a writer, researcher, educator and active member of many community projects, Barbara was a member of Women Rise for global peace for the past 8 years. She profoundly believed in dialogue and conversation and was an ongoing participant the international conversation group, World Café.

She was founder and editor of PATTERNS, which under her stewardship, became the newsletter, for the American Society for Cybernetics ASC from which she recently received a special award in recognition of her "Outstanding contributions to the nurturing of cybernetics".

She studied with students of Sai Baba and recently made a pilgrimage to India to meditate in his Buddhafield.

She is survived by her daughter and son-in-law Pat and John Bakalian of Santa Cruz; daughter Susan Vogl of Fresno; Son and daughter-in-law Peter Vogl and Kathy Hahn of Napa; Son and daughter-in-law Steven Vogl and Tish Lewis of Hampton, NH; and six granddaughters; Kelly McFarland, Sara Bakalian Wildman, Lesha Bakalian, Alana Vogl, Carli Vogl, and Olivia Vogl; as well as numerous nieces and nephews.

Contributions are preferred to the California Association for the Retarded 1220 S. Street Suite 100 Sacramento, CA 95811 or Campaign for Gender Equality at www.campaignforgenderequality.org.

For information on Barbara's upcoming memorial service and to share stories and pictures, please visit www.sympathytree.com/celebratingbarbara.