Barbara Gazzolo

Barbara Louise Spandet Gazzolo
August 21, 1931 – February 1, 2026
“God loves a cheerful giver” - 2 Corinthians 9:7
Barbara Louise Spandet Gazzolo – mother, sister, aunt, pastor, grandmother, writer, advocate, and adventurer – died peacefully in Evanston on February 1, 2026, at 94, surrounded by her family.
Born on August 21, 1931, in Dwight, Illinois to Olga Regina and Jens Jessen Spandet, Barbara (nicknamed Bobby) entered the world as a first-generation American born to Danish parents who held high expectations for her and her two older sisters, June and Shirley (Sally). Memories of FDR’s Fireside chats stamped Bobby with the power of words in awakening courage and caring for others. Sunday afternoons were spent visiting farms with her father, an Agricultural Loan Officer for the Morris Bank. She recalled his church shoes becoming dusty as he walked the cornfields with the farmers, offering pointers on riding out hard times.
By the summer of 1942, Bobby was showing a talent for mobilizing action. Her Girl Scout Diary attests, in breathless sequence, to selling Victory Pop from her red wagon, choreographing a circus complete with an animal act, organizing a girl detective agency, and floating Huck Finn style down the river on her mother’s wooden ironing board. She played cello, performed in plays and musicals, and, like her sisters, became an ardent student at Morris Community High School. When her mother challenged her to find paying work, Barbara sought and won a desk at the Morris Herald, reporting on local news with insight and wry humor. She left Morris with a clarion voice, in song and word, and a love for soaring anthems, rhetoric, and high mischief.
After two years at Lindenwood College, Barb packed her cello and typewriter for Lawrence University, from whence she cheerfully chronicled her studies in psychology, lamented a wartime shortage of men on campus, and developed a curiosity about the ideas that shaped the changing world order. Graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1953, she bought a pair of suitcases and a steerage ticket for a self-guided trip to Europe. When money ran out, she secured a secretarial position at Rotary International in Evanston IL. The job funded more travel stints and modest room and board at a house on the 1200 block of Hinman Avenue, across from which, years later, her young family came to live.
In 1955 Barbara was introduced to Francis Gazzolo, a young Rotarian and businessman, whom she married in 1957, settling in Wilmette, IL. As the family grew – Michele, Philip then Paul – Barb found friends in the North Shore French Club, the public tennis court, or singing in the Wilmette Lutheran Church choir with a soaring soprano from her mother, Olga. In summer of 1968, the family moved a couple of miles to a Victorian farmhouse in southeast Evanston, across from her post-college digs and in time for Nicholas to join the family in 1969.
Her children remember learning to write on deadline at the kitchen table, dictating a half-baked essay to their Mom as she typed faster than they could think and shouted better ways of expressing what they meant to say. Spring and fall Sundays were for family dinners in Morris, Aurora, and Evanston, cousins tumbling around the house and putting on costume plays. Summers were spent with her sisters’ families in Harbert, Michigan where Barbara’s ukulele brought the soundtrack and jam sandwiches, caramel corn, s’mores, and hot dogs were on offer. On Sundays in winter, she and Francis packed the kids, skis and a thermos full of cocoa into the station wagon heading to the nearest Midwest ski hill. They were often joined by the Foster clan, with Barbara and sister June taking turns skiing and caring for baby Nicky.
Her greatest pride and joy were her four children: Michele, Philip, Paul, and Nicholas. She warmly embraced their partners Suzanne Dron Gazzolo, Ibrahim Parlak, and Renée Shafransky who joined the family in the 90’s, and the role of grandmother to Alexandra, Madeleine, Livia, and Francesca. To her nine nieces and nephews she was a beloved aunt, remembered for her attentiveness, warmth, and avid interest in their lives. Barbara was also no stranger to tribulations. When her oldest son presented with developmental delays, she and Francis chose the road less traveled, at that time, and raised Philip within her loving family.
The 1970s met Barbara’s zeal for social reform and lively compatriots and led to lifelong friendships with other remarkable women. A staunch Democrat, she engaged with the Civil Rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam war. Her Hinman Avenue neighbors protested the student shootings at Kent State University by signing a petition to secede from the Union.
With women’s rights ascendant, Barbara felt a calling that inspired the bold third act of her life. Barbara saw the church as a force of good in the community and in the world and joined her dear niece, Kristin, in becoming a Lutheran minister. Her journey commenced, two decades and four children after graduating college, as one of a handful of women students in the seminary at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. With her family in Evanston and LSTC an hour away, such a commitment called for the mothers of Hinman Avenue to fill in the gaps. Husband Francis lent his cooking, laundering, an IBM Selectric typewriter, and his pride in Barbara’s ambition to the cause.
Ordained in 1982, among the first women pastors in the Illinois Synod, Barbara joined St. James Lutheran Church in Lake Forest, Illinois as an associate pastor. Her affection for the parish led to deep friendships stretching beyond her 22 years of service. Her ministry was rooted in a belief that faith demands action. She opposed capital punishment and devoted decades to prison ministry, visiting inmates, corresponding, and sending books to prisoners on death row, bearing witness to their humanity and praying for their salvation.
Her commitment to justice extended beyond St. James. Barbara made multiple trips to South Africa as a member of a Lutheran delegation seeking to influence the church’s position on divestment. Meeting with communities and church leaders across South Africa, she formed lasting friendships, sharing her experiences with clergy, lay audiences, and her own congregation. She returned, later, to help build a hospice for people suffering from AIDS.
With the nest empty of children, after 36 years of marriage she and Francis eventually parted, yet remained connected as loving parents and grandparents until Francis’ death in 2006. On a Habitat for Humanity trip to South Africa in 2002, she met her long-time beau, Dewey Schultz, who served as the volunteer architect for the AIDS hospice they were building. Dewey and Barbara shared a Scandinavian heritage, a commitment to faith in action, a zeal for travel, and a devotion to family. They reveled in summers at her cottage in Harbert Michigan, which afforded space for rest, reflection, and joyful gatherings of friends and family. Barbara loved to read — mysteries and theology in particular – and on most afternoons was found with a book in hand, a Dr. Pepper nearby, and a bowl of chocolate pretzels or a bar of Aldi chocolate (dark with hazelnuts) in long supply.
Known to her granddaughters as ‘Granny,’ Barbara helped to imbue a generation of Gazzolo women with curiosity, a sense of mischief and love of adventure. ‘The girls’ were regularly swept up in her red convertible for chocolate phosphates at an old-fashioned drugstore, blueberry pancakes at the cottage, or afternoon pizzelles at 1229, as the house on Hinman came to be called. On family trips to Costa Rica, Italy, Spain, and France, Granny was a chilled-out adventuress who didn’t sweat the small or even the big stuff. Blessed with a cheerful disposition laced with a fondness for the absurd, she sloughed off broken ankles, failed VRBO reservations, and forgotten passports as minor mishaps and fodder for great stories.
As her eightieth birthday approached, Barbara sold the family house and moved three blocks down Hinman Avenue to the Mather retirement community in Evanston, drawn more by lake views than by a desire to slow down. Moving into the Mather was like returning to college but with better food, grander domiciles, and a mix of old friends and new. Barbara made the most of this time, exploring the world of ideas with her dearest friends: publishing short stories, directing, and appearing in plays, leading a ‘heretical’ bible study group, and continuing to thrive in the company of people she’d known for decades. Her most precious relationship was with her older sister, June, who lived upstairs and was a companion for nightly dinners and daily giggling fits.
In the years since the onset of COVID, Barb’s weakening heart precipitated a gentle slowing down, made possible by the devoted nursing and medical staff who knew her as ‘Barbie.’ Sometimes sleepy, she would engage in sparkling conversations, win trivia contests, and (as her energy waned) compress her wit with greater brevity. By day or evening, she enjoyed repeats of Downton Abbey, The Crown, Bridgerton and real time tennis matches with her 2nd floor neighbors and leaned into drawing and painting. Twice enrolled in a hospice program – with its comfort food and limitless chocolate shakes – she rallied to the point where hospice was no longer indicated. She lived her bonus years with grace and characteristic gratitude and was afforded a view of her granddaughters discovering their own ideas, talents, and dreams of adventure.
After a 3-day vigil surrounded by loved ones, our mothers’ last spoken words were, “I am very, very happy.” She passed away at 6:10 AM on 1 February, three days shy of the birth of her first great grandson, Malcolm.
Our mother will be remembered for her moral clarity, intellectual seriousness, keen and kind wit, abiding compassion, and a knack for embracing life as a lark. She lived her life without spectacle, leaving a legacy of justice-centered ministry, committed activism, and, most of all, love expressed through deep connections with colleagues, friends, and her ever-expanding family.
A memorial service will be held at St. Paul's at 1004 Greenwood St, Evanston on May 30th at 11:00. The family asks that any who wish to honor her life do not send flowers but consider donations to Chikaming Open Lands. https://www.chikamingopenlands.org/ or the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU Donate.