Barbara Jean Wood, 80 years young and a 16-year resident of Woodcreek, Texas, passed away due to heart failure on December 29, 2022.
A cancer and Graves’ disease survivor, she was born on 4 December 1942 in Pharr, Texas, to William Mathias Busch and Agnes Mary Doffing Busch.
Barbara and Frank Wood were married on 16 June 1965, she was the love of his life for 57 years, and he often referred to her in conversation as his Bride. She is survived by her husband, 3 children: Barbara Lynn, Kimberley Ann and Frank Jr. Six grandchildren: Megan Elizabeth Smith, Sarah Rachael Shields, Windy Jocelyn Stanton, Billie Jean Sanchez, Christine Nakashige Schultz, Sabrina Elizabeth Schultz and five Greatgrandchildren; Mila Marie Sanchez, Ryleigh Jean Brooks, Titus Michael Brooks, Paisley Capri Shields and Preston David Shields. And her sisters: Betty Ann Busch and Gladys Busch East She was preceded in death by her parents, William and Agnes Busch, Sisters, Maggie Dyer and Francis Ramsey.
She grew up in Pharr, Texas, her education from 1st through 11th grades was in Roman Catholic schools, for her senior year, she went to the Pharr Texas San Juan-Alamo High School and graduated in 1960. She attended 2-years of business school in the valley. Then she worked for various local businesses.
In 1963 she visited her sister Betty and her husband, who were living in Johnstown, Pennsylvania and decided to live with them, while working as a waitress, she met Frank, who was a supervising inspector overseeing a utility placement contract in the Johnstown, Borough of Westmont. They started dating, and upon project completion, she accompanied him to Harrisburg, where they were married. During her 57 years of married life, she followed Frank through many locations as his career choices required work repositioning. While in Pennsylvania, they lived in Quarryville and Red-Lion, where she worked as a restaurant office manager, as a hospital emergency room admitting clerk and an operating room medical device clerk responsible to determine that surgical devices used during surgery were accounted for upon completion, assuring that nothing was accidently left within the patient.
In 1976 due to their daughter Kimberly’s severe allergy problems due to local vegetation, and on their doctor’s advice, they were told that she needed to live in a dryer environment. They moved to Roswell, New Mexico, where Barbara worked in the office of a plumbing contractor, then later was an office clerk in the continuing education and English departments of the New Mexico Military Institute. The military regimen of the school was difficult for many of the students, so they made their home a daytime only weekend haven for students that could get a daily pass from the school, the visiting students called both Barbara and her husband, Mom and Dad.
An amusing situation arose while Barbara was on a bus trip to visit her parents in Texas, nine students also from Texas were also traveling home for visits, and as they traveled, they all called Barbara Mom, another amazed adult passenger, ask her if they were all her children.
After two years, due to reduced employment opportunities in Roswell, Frank applied for a Federal Civil Service position with the Air Force at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, and they moved to Alamogordo.
Then in 1983 Frank received a position as Facility Manager at Air Force Plant 42, an Air Force aircraft production facility in Palmdale, California. resulting in the Air Force moving the family to the city of Lancaster. when there, Barbara had opportunities to visit the plants facilities and viewed, with Frank, non-classified production of two NASA space shuttles, the Air Forces B-1-B Bomber, and servicing of the SR-71, U-2, TR-1, F-117 Fighter and the first flight of the first B-2 Bomber.
Barbara was hired by the Los Angeles County Social Services Department, from which she retired in November 1995, Frank retired from Federal Civil Service at the same time, and they moved to a house in Cedar Oak Mesa, TX. Within a year, a larger home was purchased in the City of Woodcreek, Texas, retaining the COM property as a rental for income which allowed her to not work and be a house wife and participate in several charitable church and community activities.
Barbara was a loving mother to her children, giving her off work time to attend school activities, girl and boy scout activities and church youth events. Her children and husband appreciated her great sense of humor and assistance in all facets of the children’s education and personal development.
Barbara was a bread baker most of her married life and enjoyed cooking, trying new recipes, especially joining various in-home dining groups through the years. She collected a large assortment of cookbooks and several hundred dinner plans as a result of various Pennsylvania, New Mexico, California and Texas church and Welcome Wagon dining group participations.
Barbara was also a collector of frogs ending up with over 300 different ceramic, plastic and stuffed frogs, she also enjoyed art and accompanied her husband in their joint appreciation of art and was a strong influence in helping select those for their collection.
Barbara loved to travel. Since 1985 through 2021, she and Frank’s favorite vacation was ocean cruseing taking 27 of them, they consisted of 7 to 16day cruses 6 before retirement the remainder after retirement. she has sailed several times to the East and Western Caribbean with different island destinations on each cruise, 3 to the Mexican Riviera, 2 times through the Panama Canal once each way, a 15-day Alaska sailing and land tour, a 15-day round trip to Hawaii. A flight to Rome with 3 days of touring followed by a 14 day return to Galveston, TX, by ship. A 16-day Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand cruise, with flights to and from the USA.
On a trip to New York she visited the Holocaust museum and the 9-11 museum, a female 9-11 tour guide was a retired Paramedic who was one of many who searched for survivors and bodies in the twin tower rubble as a result of the toxicity of the area she developed an uncurable lung disease and had to retire and would eventually die from the disease, she told her that as a result of the conditions there will be as many additional deaths as the number of those that died in the building collapses. After the New York visit, she went aboard ship and cruised along the north Atlantic coast from New York to Nova Scotia where, in the Bay of Fundy, she witnessed the amazing specifical of two whirlpools about 50-feet apart, one rotating clockwise and the other counterclockwise, the Bay of Fundy is the only place on earth where that phenomenon exists. Another trip was a 21-day Blue Danube River cruise with land tour through Poland, including a real heart-breaking tour to the Auschwitz concentration camp. She and her husband also did a 7 day back roads through New England tour photographing the fall leaf colors at their peak, it included busing through the white mountains during a blizzard, where the tour group got off the bus and had a rollicking snow ball battle and built a snow man, all had warm coats, but nobody had gloves, afterwards the tour guide had the bus stop at his home where they all had hot chocolate or coffee and cookies, during the same trip upon completion of the tour, extra time was taken to visit Boston and Salem just before Halloween, Salem was amazing with many attendees and pets dressed in elaborate witch costumes, there were clothing and witching venders of all types with heavily bejeweled witch hats selling up to $3,000.00. A two-day tour of Boston was exciting, riding on the Old Town Trolly, seeing all the historic, revolutionary period sights read about in history books such as the Paul Revere house, old state house, Faneuil Hall, Bunker Hill, Granary Burial Ground, Boston Tea Party Museum and Old North Church of the one if by land or two if by sea light signal from the church steeple that informed revolutionary militias which way the British army was using in an effort to disarm the colonists. A tour of the USS Constitution, aka Old Ironsides, a three masted, wooden hulled heavy frigate of the U.S. Navy, launched in 1797, first seeing combat service in the war of 1812 and later fighting and defeating the Barbary Pirates that were attacking American shipping in the Mediterranean. It is well preserved and remains in active US naval service today, having served our country for 226 years.
Other tours she has done are: Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay and Angel Island also in the bay that was the west coast immigration center through which more than 300,000 people from 80 countries entered the US.
A California wine tour bus in which 6 cases of assorted wines were acquired and brought home to Texas.
A tour of the Winchester Mystery House near San Jose, CA, where Sarah Winchester, the widow of the owner of the Winchester rifle company set about on a continuous 36year construction effort to confuse the ghosts of those killed by Winchester rifles who she feared would haunt her home.
A tour of Hearst Castle in San Simeon, CA. An amazing place, Hearst had representatives going through all the countries of Europe, whenever they saw something that they thought Hearst would be interested in, they would contact him and describe what they saw, and if it interested him, they would purchase and ship it to him, size and costs were immaterial, his architect, Julia Morgan would figure out a way to incorporate them into the castle.
A 15-day bus trip with an included 6-day cruise with before and after tours of the historic cities of the south.
A 3-day trip to the Grand Canyon traveling by train.
4 train trips along various routes from Texas to Los Angeles, CA, to visit the family. Then flights home.
One train trip to Crescent City, CA, to visit family with a return flight home.
A visit to the Oatman, Arizona, an 1860 mining boom town where you can feed carrots to the wild donkeys. watch reenacted gunfights in the main street and good food at the Olive Oatman Restaurant, also she and her husband went to another restaurant, dining on home baked Sourdough bread, potato salad, Cole slaw and baked beans, the entree was freshly caught, barbecued Rattle Snake, a stay in the honeymoon suite of the 1902 Oatman Hotel where Clark Gable and Carol Lombard spent their honeymoon night, it had a reported hunted room, two rooms down the hall but nothing was heard, the ghost must have taken a night off.
Barbara has had an amazing life.
Funeral services will be held at 10-AM on February 25th at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 3039 Ranch Road 12, San Marcos, TX 78666, Phone No. (512) 353-1979. An after-funeral reception will be held in the church hall, followed by a 12:30 PM trip to St. Stephens Episcopal Church at 6000 FM3237, Wimberley, TX 78676, Phone (512) 8479956. For the interment of Barbara’s remains in the church cemetery Columbarium.
In lieu of flowers it is requested that memorial donations be made in her name to the American Heart Association, and/or the American Cancer Society and/or Barbara’s home church, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, to support the churches good works as directed by Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
