Barbara Roberts
ROBERTS, BARBARA (HOWE) - A tribute from her daughter, Anne A former Grandville city librarian and newspaper editor at the Grandville Star, Barbara (Howe) Roberts immigrated to Canada when she was 77. Healthy enough to be classified a "Super Senior" by Canadian scientists studying aging, Barb created a vibrant new life for herself in Vancouver, BC, hosting friends and relatives, baking bread, gardening, and helping neighbours learn English. Her heart finally stopped on December 7, 2013. She was 95. The second daughter of Edgar (a proud union man who worked at Kelvinator) and Tilley Howe, Barb grew up in Grandville, with older sister Virginia (Brown) and three younger brothers: Jim, Richard and Ned. After Barb married Richmond Roberts, they settled eventually in Riverbend. Richmond's parents, Rex and Eliza, and the Roberts/Wells families who farmed along Kenowa Road provided that proverbial "village" to raise their four children. (Kelyn now lives in Santa Monica, Ross near Seattle, Anne in Vancouver, BC, and Laura (Jonick) in Coopersville.) Richmond, who worked as a metallurgist at the General Motors Diesel Equipment plant, died in 1994. Lively, engaged, provocative and intelligent, Barb transformed the quiet old library into a noisy hub by welcoming each patron as if into her own home, starting conversations about books, and rounding up volunteers to organize the card catalog. As an editor, Barb honed writing skills that were used the rest of her life to author personalized children's books and letters for her eight grandchildren and then eight great-grandchildren. She corresponded with literally hundreds of friends and relatives. No one ever threw away a letter from Barbara. Both Richmond and Barb were independent thinkers who encouraged lively debates, resisted dogma, especially of the religious kind, helped set up a child care centre for inner city kids, marched against the Vietnam War and advocated for prison reform. Barb's last good deed was to donate her body to a medical school for research. A lover of poetry, Barb particularly treasured one by Mary Oliver called "When Death Comes." So closely does it capture the essence of her life and spirit, she might have written it herself. "when it's over, I want to say, all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms."
Published in Grand Rapids Press on Feb. 16, 2014
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