Barbara Bynum

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. -- Barbara Westberry Bynum passed away peacefully Sunday, Oct. 12, at her home in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with her family at her side following a stroke. She was 80.

Barbie was born Nov. 1, 1944, to the late Edna and Hugh Westberry. She grew up in Albany, Georgia, where she graduated from Albany High School in 1962.

Barbie lived for nearly four decades in the Chattanooga area, where she owned and managed Lambs & Ivy, an antiques and collectibles shop, for 28 years.

To her friends and family, Barbie was fiercely loyal with a bottomless heart. In her final years, as illness impaired her memory and speech, her warmth and playful humor shined undimmed.

Barbie cherished time with her four grandchildren -- playing board games, holding tea parties and reading to them from joke books that sometimes made their parents blush. She loved to spoil her beloved pets with peanut butter, meatballs and other treats. Over the years she adopted several lucky dogs, cats and one Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. Close by at the end was her faithful Australian Shepherd, Jax.

After finishing high school, Barbie graduated from the Georgia Baptist School of Nursing in Atlanta.

She met Joseph Bynum, a Georgia Tech engineering student, when her brother invited him to a family dinner. They married in 1969 and moved with their young family to Pennsylvania, Alabama and Arizona before settling in Chattanooga.

Barbie worked as a registered nurse at Georgia Baptist Hospital in Atlanta, and later put her medical skills to use volunteering for the American Red Cross in Huntsville, Alabama. When a devastating tornado outbreak struck in 1974, Barbie drove to work in the violent storm so she could draw donors' blood to treat the injured. She was pregnant at the time.

Barbie sold real estate in Chattanooga before she and a business partner opened Lambs & Ivy in 1989. The shop allowed Barbie to share her deep knowledge of antiques, from Victorian furniture and flow blue China to vintage, collectible dolls.

In addition to her husband, Barbie is survived by her children Russ (Dana) of Savannah, Georgia, and Marci Pittman (Josh) of Signal Mountain, Tennessee; grandchildren Samuel Pittman, Emmy Pittman, Carter Bynum and Calvin Bynum; siblings Hugh Westberry (Beth) of Big Canoe, Georgia, and Beth Johnson (Scott Mall) of Chattanooga; and nephew Bryan Westberry (Claire Mandrycky) of Decatur, Georgia.

The family will hold a private funeral. A celebration of life is being planned.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations in Barbie's memory be made to the Pat Summitt Foundation, https://donate.patsummitt.org/campaign/667766/donate.

Arrangements are by the North Chapel of Chattanooga Funeral Home, Crematory, and Florist, 5401 Highway 153, Hixson, TN 37343.

Please share your thoughts and memories at www.chattanooganorthchapel.com