Barbara Lynne Watkins

Barbara L. Watkins, 84, died August 1, 2025. A Celebration of Life will be held September 27, 2025 at 1:00 p.m. at Broken Arrow Park Shelter, 2800 Louisiana St., Lawrence, KS.

Barbara Lynne (Gowan) Watkins, of Lawrence, Kansas, died August 1, 2025. She was born June 25, 1941, in Ames, Iowa, to Arthur Mitchell Gowan and Marjorie Mace Gowan. She was an ornery child and a tomboy and loved to play outside and help her father tend his gardens. Barbara graduated from Ames High School in 1959 and Iowa State University in 1963. She later earned MEd and PhD degrees from the University of Kansas. She was awarded a United States Department of Justice graduate research fellowship for her dissertation research.

In the 1960s, she taught English and history at secondary schools in Brown County, Indiana, and ESL at the Immanuel Kant Hochschule in Neumunster, Germany, and the University of Kiel, Germany. She was an editor and coordinator of distance learning at the University of Kansas Continuing Education for 38 years, retiring in 2007. She also coordinated the Kansas Studies Program and coedited several books on the history of the University of Kansas and Lawrence. In addition, she was project coordinator and editor for a series of interviews with Lawrence/Douglas County African Americans. She received several regional and national awards for these projects and was the recipient of multiple national and regional awards for her work as co-director of the Langston Hughes National Poetry Project. Twice she received the NUCEA Award for Continuing Excellence in Programming in the Arts, Sciences and Humanities.

She served as a Girl Scout leader; vice-president of the Lawrence Community Nursery School board; president of the Independence, Inc, board and the Westwood Homeowners Association; a member of the University of Kansas Faculty Senate; and on the boards of Historic Mount Oread Friends, Douglas County Legal Aid Society, and several other local and national organizations.

In 1973 she was named an Outstanding Young Woman of America. In 2001 she received the Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center Lifetime Achievement Award for Community Service, and in 2002 she was inducted into the University of Kansas Women's Hall of Fame.

Following her retirement from KU she was a partner in the web design company KLW-Webwork. She also edited several books and museum exhibit texts and wrote articles and book reviews for The Best Times, the Johnson County and Douglas County, Kansas, senior citizens newspapers; and the Jayhawk Audubon Society Newsletter.

In l963 she married Donald Watkins. They later divorced. She is survived by their daughter, Alison Watkins, and son, Aaron Watkins, and his wife, Dawna, and grandsons, Nicholas and Xanthus Watkins; her sister, Sandra Kirk, and the families of her daughters, Donna Kirk-Swaffar and Kim Kirk Polson; and her sponsored child Sandhiya in India.

She was a passionate gardener, raising hostas primarily; dog owner, especially her beloved Great Pyrenees; an avid tennis player, winning several city, university, and state championships; and loved to spend quality time with dear friends, hiking, cross-country skiing, and reading.

Barbara supported local organizations including Health Care Access, Douglas County Senior Services, Visiting Nurses, the Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, the Lawrence Public Library, the Lawrence Humane Society; and national and international organizations including the Audubon Society, UNICEF Children's Fund, Oxfam, Doctors without Borders, Charity: Water, and Amnesty International.

As she wished, there will be no funeral or memorial service. She requested a green burial-preferably in her backyard so she could become compost for future generations of her beloved hostas. Memorials can be sent, in her name, to the charity of your choice.

Until she died, she continued to be trouble–of the best sort.

"I give you this one thought to keep – I am with you still – I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow; I am the diamond glint on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain; I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning hush, I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft star that shines at night. Do not think of me as gone – I am with you still – in each new dawn."

A final thought: "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."