Barbara Moore

Barbara Gherty Moore passed away on the morning of January 29th after a sixteen-year struggle with Parkinson's Disease. She was eighty years old. Barbara spent a large portion of her life in service to others, first to the Church and then to her family. She began her career as a paralegal, but also worked in banking, education at St. Paul's School and Marist High School, and executive support at the University of Oregon. After her boys left for college, Barbara worked for both the University Law School and the Office of Development. She instilled in her children a love of logic and language, filling time with word games magicked up from the license plates of passing cars, Scrabble, endless hours in the library, and lessons on the Oxford Comma. Her boys have her compulsion to correct the typos of everyone around them. They are not doing good, they are doing well. Barbara was a talented cook and was always ready to host the Queen for dinner at a moment's notice. She did not suffer fools lightly but had endless energy to lead them towards wisdom. And to show them how to hold their knives and forks properly. She loved travel, plays, books, and poetry. In her later years, her community surrounded her and helped her fight against Parkinson's as it robbed her first of travel, then of movement, and finally, painfully, of speech. Her family is filled with gratitude for the friends that made her life better, taking her to concerts, dinners, plays, and church services. Barbara was the oldest of the seven children of Lawrence and Geraldine Gherty. She leaves behind two sons (Dave and Kevin), three grandsons (Wyatt, Gabe, and Wes), one granddaughter (Callie), and two daughters-in-law (Amy and Liz), all of whom miss her already. She has rejoined her husband Maurice, who went ahead of her in 2007.