- Date Of Birth: February 12, 1939
- Date Of Death: November 6, 2010
- State: Pennsylvania
Barbara Jeanne Raup, age 71, died in her home early Saturday morning, November 6, 2010, from a heart attack.
Barbara was born on February 12, 1939, in Pound Ridge, NY, where she grew up until age 9 with her mother Bess and father Raymond. Her father worked for Lederle Labs, where, in 1947, he made a breakthrough discovery to produce ingestible penicillin capsules. Barbara, Bess and Raymond moved to California in 1948, where her father established UCLA’s school for nuclear medicine. They settled in Malibu and Barbara attended Santa Monica High School, where she was on the drill team.
Barbara attended Rutgers University (then Douglas Women’s College) from 1956 to 1960. A year after graduation, she joined her parents in Athens, Greece, where her father had taken a sabbatical to assist the Greek government develop their program in nuclear medicine. While there, she volunteered regularly with the U.S.O., where she met her future husband, Thomas C. Raup.
Tom was serving as Chief Legal Officer on the carrier U.S.S. Saratoga and had gone to the U.S.O. for help organizing a party for his staff. Tom and Barbara met at the U.S.O. office and dated during his port leave in Athens. They kept in touch over the next 9 months and then reunited when her family returned to the United States in 1963 during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. They were married on June 22nd, 1963, and lived in New Jersey from 1963 until 1966 while Tom attended Columbia Law School. After law school, Tom and Barbara settled in Williamsport, PA, where Tom initially practiced law with the firm of Rice, Fisher and Raup, and then went on to be a state trail judge in Lycoming County.
Their son, Ethan, was born in 1970. Barbara dedicated herself to being a great mom. She was involved early on in West Branch School. She convinced Tom to get a pop-up trailer, which saw them on trips to Florida, the Chesapeake Bay, Alaska, and her family’s annual summer trip to the Rocky Mountains. She became an avid soccer fan, following her son to Freudenstadt, Germany, all over Pennsylvania, and eventually up into New England. She sacrificed to help send Ethan to college and graduate school and to help her son’s young family get settled. She made a real effort to pass on a strong set of values.
Barbara was also incredibly creative. During college, she harbored an ambition to be a set designer or interior decorator. While motherhood interfered with those plans, Barbara channeled her creativity and design sense into remarkable crafts — especially needlepoint and quilt-making. She leaves behind a series of beautiful quilts that will be cherished by her family for a long time. She also got deeply involved in the design and construction of two traditional log homes she and Tom built: a cabin in Wyoming and their current home in Loyalsock Township.
She developed a strong love for Wyoming and the Rocky Mountains, starting with their summer vacations in the late 1970s. In 1994, she graduated from the pop-up trailer to a small cabin, built at the north end of the Jackson Hole Valley. Barbara, Tom, Ethan and his future wife Tess, and Joe, Barbara’s step son, spent that summer building the cabin. It was a special time.
Barbara developed another passion a little later in life: Gettysburg and the American Civil War. For the last ten years, she and Tom spent a weekend each month in Gettysburg. She became an expert in the history of the war and of the battle and was active in the Gettysburg Foundation. Those of her friends and family lucky enough to join her for a weekend at Gettysburg were treated to an unrivaled tour. She was very proud of a recently completed period dress that she was planning to wear to Remembrance Day weekend this November 20th.
Barbara’s ashes will be spread in her two favorite places: Gettysburg and her cabin in Wyoming. She is survived by her husband, Tom, son Ethan, step-son Joe, daughter-in-law Tess and two grandchildren: Jonah aged 10 and Owen aged 7.
