Sheila Mary Barber

1931 - 2019

Barber , Sheila Mary
Sheila Mary Barber (nee Marr), aged 87, of Cromwell, died peacefully in her home on January 25, 2019. Sheila was born on March 20, 1931 in London, England and lived in Middletown for most of her adult life. As a young girl, she was evacuated from London during the Blitz in World War II and lived in Scotland from 1939 to 1945 with her mother, a pediatrician, and brother. This was a formative experience which led to a fierce allegiance to her Scottish heritage for the rest of her life (her father, also a doctor, remained in London to continue his medical practice). After the war, Sheila attended Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset, where she excelled in the study of literature and foreign languages, subjects which became lifelong passions. She went on to Somerville College, Oxford, where she received an M.A. degree in History, and worked for two years thereafter as a management trainee at Harrods department store in London. At Oxford, she met her husband of more than sixty years, William J. Barber, an American, who was also a student at the university. Sheila and Bill married in 1955 and moved to Middletown in 1957, where he became a Professor of Economics at Wesleyan. Over the next six decades they became stalwart members of the Wesleyan and Middletown communities. For twenty-plus years, Sheila volunteered every Friday and Sunday at the Middlesex Hospital outpatient surgery and hospice units, where she acted as a healing force for many families. She recorded audiobooks for people with blindness for many years, and worked as a home health aide and teaching assistant in art history at Wesleyan. In the 1980s, she completed a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies at Wesleyan, and became fluent in Italian and French. She was deeply devoted to her husband and his career, and together they raised three children. Sheila and Bill traveled widely in Africa, Asia, Western and Eastern Europe, living in Zimbabwe, London, Oxford, Florence and Rome during sabbatical years. Sheila was known for her social grace and charm, her love of literature and the arts (particularly jazz and painting), her unremitting belief in education, her sense of adventure, her compassion for the underdog, her wit and her irreverent sense of humor. She had an exquisite sense of style and color. Sheila was a person of indefatigable good cheer who could talk and laugh with anyone. She enjoyed a wonderful marriage with her husband, who died in 2016. They were deeply compatible, inseparable and each other's best friend. Sheila is survived by her three sons and their wives, Tom Barber and Marina Grossi of Boston, MA; John and Nicola Barber of Winchester, England; and Charles Barber and Laura Radin of Middletown, and six grandchildren, Alec, Marco, Harry, Ben, Hannah and Louis. Sheila had an indomitable spirit to the end, and she and the family were grateful for the excellent care provided to her by Covenant Village of Cromwell, Home Instead Senior Care and Middlesex Health's Hospice Unit. Donations in Sheila's memory can be made to Middlesex Health Hospice and Palliative Care at 28 Crescent Street, Middletown, CT 06457. A private memorial service will be held in the spring, after which Sheila's ashes will be placed next to those of her husband at Indian Hill Cemetery in Middletown, near their former home. Sheila asked that a bagpiper play at the ceremony.