Violet Barrow

1928 - 2024

News story
By David Patch
Blade staff writer

Violet Barrow, a mother of seven who was renowned for cooking for her large extended family and who supported a South Toledo jewelry business two of her sons founded, died Thursday at the Swanton Valley Health Care Center. She was 95.

After living in her family's River Road home for more than 50 years, Mrs. Barrow's declining health had prompted her to move into nursing care a few months before her passing, son Gabriel Barrow said. A specific cause of death was not known, he said.

From Sunday dinners she began preparing before the family went to church to massive feasts for Thanksgiving and Christmas, Mrs. Barrow's focus was often in her kitchen, where a six-foot table often staged the ingredients for the day's meals, Mr. Barrow said.

Lebanese and Syrian specialties were often present, including what the son said was known simply as "Syrian bread" at the time but now would be called pita bread. With that, she made triangular meat pies and other delicacies, including a Middle Eastern form of baklava.

When school was closed because of a storm, he said, Mrs. Barrow gathered her children in the kitchen to bake Syrian cookies with her homemade dough.

"She'd have that table covered in balls of dough," Mr. Barrow recalled.

Lisa Barrow, a daughter who was Mrs. Barrow's sixth child, said her mother was "a very selfless person," patient and calm even when children swirled around a house that became a neighborhood magnet.

"She knew where her kids were. That's why she liked it," Ms. Barrow said, recalling in particular a time when her mother made a huge dough ball and rolled out 14 individual-size pizzas for a 14-girl slumber party.

And yet somehow, the daughter said, Mrs. Barrow was able to sleep despite the noise such a slumber party could generate.

Born May 16, 1928, to George and Evelyn Farran, she was a graduate of Scott High School and married William Barrow, who had a remodeling and contracting business. They started their family in a home on Robinwood Avenue, but moved to River Road during the early 1960s. Mr. Barrow died in January, 1987.

Mrs. Barrow worked briefly downtown and then as a bookkeeper for a Monroe Street restaurant and a medical office before becoming a homemaker full-time, Lisa Barrow said.

Son David Barrow had started a home business repairing wrist and pocket watches after a severe car crash in 1970 left him paraplegic at age 18, and in 1977 he and Gabriel Barrow, later joined by Lisa and brother Greg, opened Barrow's Jewelers and Horologists on Glendale Avenue.

Gabriel Barrow said their mother became a fixture at the shop, often greeting customers, doing administrative tasks, and even sweeping the floors if that needed to be done.

"She really interacted with a lot of the customers. … She'd make us lunches - everybody got their own lunch," Mr. Barrow said.

And if a customer were accompanied by small children, he said, she doted on those kids just like she did her grandchildren.

"She redefined was it was to be a grandma," granddaughter Hannah Barrow said, describing Mrs. Barrow's devotion as "above and beyond" what her friends' grandparents offered.

"Her love language was definitely feeding people. You couldn't go hungry in that home," the granddaughter said.

She remembered in particular waking up to the sounds and smells of Mrs. Barrow preparing fresh pita bread and rolling grape leaves in the morning.

The living room was set up with games and a PlayStation console for the grandchildren, who pretty much had free run of the house, the granddaughter said. Yet while it could be rambunctious at times, an aura of respect was kept by the young people.

"Everyone got dropped off at grandma's house, and she never complained because she loved it," Hannah Barrow said.

Besides her husband and son David, who died in 2012, Mrs. Barrow was preceded in death by three brothers and a sister.

She is survived by her sons Gabriel, Gregory, and Billy Barrow; daughters, Denise Matheny, Michelle Popoff, and Lisa Barrow; sister, Yvonne Mock; 12 grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren.

Visitation will be held Tuesday from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at St. Elias Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church, 4940 Harroun Rd. in Sylvania. Visitation will resume in the church at 10 a.m. Wednesday followed by funeral services at 11 a.m.

The family suggests memorial tributes to the church.