The Aspen Times * Wednesday, February 19, 2003
Doris Emma Wroncy Barlow, a resident of Aspen from 1986 until December of 2002, died in Los Altos, Calif., on Saturday, Feb. 15, after suffering a broken leg on January 21. She was 95 years old.
She spent the early years of her life near Long Branch, N.J. where she was born in 1907. In 1916, she moved to Little Falls, N.Y., where she lived with her aunt and uncle. As a young woman, she was sent to Rogers Hall, a finishing school in Massachusetts.
In 1929, she married John Lester Webb and their son, Jerry, was born a year later. During the depression, after her short-lived marriage, Barlow lived with her brothers and worked along New Jersey's boardwalk.
Later, Doris found a job at Lord & Taylor in New York City where, in 1939, she met and married Dick Stowe Barlow, a young engineer with Bell Labs. In 1950, the family moved to Redondo Beach, Calif. where Doris fell in love with the Pacific Ocean: she and her dog, Duchess, walked on the beach nearly every day.
In the mid-1970s, Doris moved to Denver to be near her daughter Sally, and was ultimately, a primary caretaker and companion for her infant grandson. She spoke of those years as some of her happiest.
In 1986, she moved with Sally to Aspen, where she lived at Centennial until a heart condition forced a move to Castle Creek Terrace in 1997. Her move to California, prompted by increasing frailty, did not come until December 2002.
In her early years in Aspen, Doris relished the ability to walk on the area's mountain trails. In particular, she loved the trail below the Aspen Institute, and the old path along the lower reaches of Hunter Creek. For many years, she used Aspen's free bus system to get downtown, and knew all the drivers.
Clerks at both grocery stores knew and helped her, sometimes actually offering to drop off her heavier parcels on their way home to save her lugging the bags on the bus. Animals were her passion, and during her lifetime, she had many cats and dogs.
She was an avid reader, and read her favorite books over and over when getting to and from the library became too great a task. She had many friends, almost all a generation younger than she was, and many of them former neighbors from her days at Centennial. Frequent visitors to her room at Castle Creek Terrace, they seemed to relish her ever-ready opinions, her great empathy, her love of life, and her wonderful stories.
She was the oldest participant in Aspen Valley Hospital's Cardiac Rehabilitation Classes—which she attended for four years, faithfully walking from Castle Creek Terrace to the hospital for classes, three times a week, even in winter weather. A bench, contributed by Dennis and Elsa Walton to the Aspen Foundation, can be found along that Hospital path, designed to allow someone like Doris a place to stop, and rest under the aspen trees.
She is survived by her son Jerry Barlow of St. Augustine, Fla; her daughters Elsa Walton of Los Altos, Calif. and Sally Barlow-Perez of Palo Alto, Calif.; and by her grandchildren, Tara Barlow of St. Augustine, Fla., Scott Barlow of Virginia, Jeffrey Parry of Pescadero, Calif., Christopher Parry of Santa Cruz, Calif.; Colin Perez of Davis Calif., and Severin Perez of Berkeley, Calif..
A family memorial service will be held in California on Sunday, February 23. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to a local charity which has to do with cats. A gathering to celebrate the life of Doris Barlow is planned for next July in Aspen.
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