Barbara Jane Alstead Babich

Barbara Jane Alstead Babich was born in Brooklyn on 27 July 1941 and she died in the Bronx on 23 March 2024. Raised in Brooklyn, she would go on to live in Manhattan, Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Long Island. Later in life, she moved to New Jersey and to Westchester County. The mother of seven children, she was married to Robert Joseph Babich in January of 1956. She earned a bachelor's degree in Human Behavior from Stony Brook University in New York and had interests ranging from poetry to spirituality and she was, in later years, an accomplished painter. She trained as a Montessori teacher, teaching for several years, including a brief residence in Arizona. She was a yoga instructor and an enthusiastic fan of swing and ballroom dance as well as jazz. She is survived by her long-time domestic partner, Gerry Solin and his daughters, Allison and Jill Solin along with her children: Babette Strong, Frania Shelley-Grielen, Roberta and her husband Kevin McQueen, Robert J. Babich II and his daughters, Sara and Vivian, Maria Gray and her daughter, Jessica Gray, and Tom Babich and his wife, Lynn. She is also survived by her cousin, Sal Iaccarino as well as her niece, Stacey Alstead Forman and her husband, Scott Forman and their three sons, Jack, Nate, and Owen in addition to her nephew, Michael Alstead. She is preceded in death by her parents, Marie Brancale and Donald V. Alstead and by her late ex-husband, Robert, her daughter, Colette Barbara Babich, her son-in-law, Tracy Burr Strong, her nephew, Adam Alstead, and her brother, Dale Alstead as well as her aunts and uncles on her mother's side - she was especially close to her aunt, Josephine Auricchio - and by her aunt Dorothy, her father's twin sister.