Barbara Friend Lewis

Barbara Lee Friend Lewis—known affectionately to all as Bobby—died on January 18, 2026, after an extraordinary 97 years on earth. During a life that spanned from the Great Depression to these strange modern times, Bobby approached the passing years with curiosity, humor, and chagrin. She was a voracious reader and expanded her mind by poring over books of all kinds, though never for longer than a day or two; she was a speed-reader who confessed to skipping over descriptions (“I know what a forest looks like. I don’t need to read about every leaf”). She was warm, funny, and charming. Her eyes lit up when you walked into a room, and she knew exactly what to say (even if she later made a wily comment behind your back). Friends and family loved to receive her colorful letters—later her emails, texts, and hilarious social media comments. She was close with her children, grandchildren, and step-grandchildren; becoming a great-grandmother filled her with unbridled joy and gratitude for the experience. True to her name, she was a wonderful friend, with many close ones that traversed both decades and generations.

Bobby was born in Hinsdale, a suburb of Chicago, in 1928. She was brought up with intellect and world-wonder, raised by her parents and a gaggle of aunts who lived next door on the “Aunt Hill.” Her mother Henrietta’s family emigrated from Germany. Bobby always said that her father’s family, who came from Austria-Hungary, were the only Jewish family in Hinsdale. Her father was a lawyer; her grandfather, Emil Friend, was a financial editor who wrote under the name “Boersianer” and was a close confidant of William Randolph Hearst. Aside from her mother’s sisters on the Aunt Hill, her father’s sister Esther—an artist and children’s book illustrator—was a big part of her creative upbringing. When Bobby was twelve years old, her beloved brother Peter was born.

In Hinsdale, Bobby and her friend Ruby penned a gossip column for the school paper called "Up and Down the Corridor with Rube and Boob" (a nickname that later humiliated her). During college, they started saving money so they could travel “The Continent” just like Jackie Bouvier (Kennedy) and her sister Lee. To do so, they spent summers waitressing at resorts in Cape Cod, Yellowstone National Park, and Winter Park, Florida—where, on a night out, Bobby met a soldier named Robert Lewis. She and Ruby finally took their epic trip to Europe the summer after Bobby graduated from Beloit College. When Bobby disembarked from the Queen Mary in New York upon their return, that soldier was waiting to meet her.

During the early years of their marriage, Robert worked as a chef for an airline (back then they were actual chefs!), and the Lewises lived all over the country, raising their children—Tracy, Steven, Tamara, and Suzanne—along the way. Eventually, they bought a big old Victorian in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where Bobby helped her husband open his first French restaurant, Le Country Restaurant. She had a sociable and busy life, volunteering at the summer theatre festival and working as the director of South Forty, an innovative at-risk youth program run by Governor Dukakis.

There were also years in Williamstown that were overshadowed by heartbreak and grief. By her mid-forties, Bobby’s marriage was over. She had lost her only brother, Peter, and her youngest daughter, Suzie, each to fatal car accidents a decade apart. Peter was just shy of twenty-one when he died; Suzie was only fourteen.

Bobby never fully recovered from these tragic losses and had trouble talking about them even so many years later. But when she left Williamstown to join her daughter Tam in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she experienced a vibrant new lease on life, reclaiming her charming and sociable nature and working many jobs—as an event coordinator at St. John’s College, a mortgage lender at the Bank of Santa Fe, and, finally, as a trainer at Curves Gym for Ladies. Her grandchildren loved to visit her in Santa Fe, spending winters skiing on the mountain and summers climbing the apricot tree behind her apartment.

Though Bobby never remarried, she had a life of love and laughter with men: a long-distance love that spanned years, covert romances, and the platonic love of friends’ spouses and gay male friends—too many of whom were lost tragically to the AIDS epidemic.

Friendship was always the central story. In Santa Fe, Bobby had a large support group, including Piper and Jane, who became her lifeline. Another of her great and lifelong friends was Dennis Keller, also from Hinsdale, who had been the best friend and Princeton classmate of her little brother Peter. After Peter’s death, Dennis became like a brother to Bobby and remained that way until the day she died.

In 2001, a gift from Dennis established the Friend Center for Engineering Education at Princeton, dedicated to Peter and their longstanding friendship. When the center opened, Bobby was there to cut the ribbon and give an amazing eulogy for Peter. That day, celebrating her brother’s legacy with her family by her side, remained a dear memory to Bobby forever.

Bobby spent many summers and school breaks with her four grandchildren in Chicago and Dallas. Her effusive warmth and funny idiosyncrasies—strange kitchen inventions and those wily criticisms—were fixtures of their childhoods. She is imprinted on who they became as people. She loved watching golf and reminiscing about the past with her son Steve, and she traveled the world with her family, thanks to her daughter Tracy. She spent her eighties and nineties living with each of her two daughters in New Orleans, North Carolina, Belize, and different parts of Mexico. She spent her last months by the ocean, with her daughter Tam and son-in-law Dennis, on Mexico’s Pacific Coast.

Being ninety-seven, she was preceded in death by far too many loved ones to name. (As she said recently to her friend Piper, in amazement, “I haven’t ever met anyone ninety-seven.”) She is survived by three generations of Fairleighs, Lewises, Ochitwas, Roberts, Rossis, and Todds, who will remember her forever.