Barbara Ann Ward

Barbara Ann Perkins Ward was born December 3, 1940, in Buckeye, Arizona, where her family had moved to escape the Dust Bowl. She was the younger daughter of James E. and Marie Miller Perkins. After a few years in Arizona, the family returned to Texas and settled near Itasca, where every day Barbara rode Doc Bennett’s bus to school. A proud Wampus Cat, she was Football Sweetheart in 1957 and graduated from Itasca High School in 1959. Soon afterward, she moved to Fort Worth, where she was employed at the Bank of Commerce and Tarrant State Bank. In 1960 she met Jack Ward; they were married on November 22, 1965, at St. Paul’s Methodist Church. Barbara and Jack had four children: eldest daughter Janet, twins James and Joseph, and youngest daughter Rebekah. Barbara was a stay-at-home mom until the early eighties, when she went to work in the Microbiology Department at Alcon Labs; she retired from Alcon in 2003. She loved traveling with her family, and especially enjoyed trips to Montreal, Maine, New Brunswick and Victoria, British Columbia. She was an active and enthusiastic participant in her children’s educational lives, and was proud of her term as president of the Paschal Band Booster Association. A life-long reader, Barbara instilled a love of books in her kids and visited the Fort Worth Library on an almost weekly basis. She loved antique stores, estate sales, the Dallas Stars, cooking for the holidays, sewing and working in her yard, but most of all she loved being GrandBaba to her beloved grandchildren Gabrielle, James and Caroline. Barbara was preceded in death by her parents J. E. and Marie Perkins, and by her infant children Janet and James. She is survived by Jack, her husband of 54 years, her son Joseph and daughter-in-law Angie, her daughter Rebekah, her sister and brother-in-law Betty and Bob Pollard, her brother-in-law Jerry Ward, numerous nieces, nephews and cousins, and many friends.