BARBARA JEAN MUISE
December 22, 1926 — March 5, 2024
WESTBOROUGH
BARBARA JEAN MUISE
Fienemann Muise played field hockey, softball, and basketball throughout her
school years. A World War II Air Raid Warden, Barbara was the Class Honors
Speaker at her Reading, MA High School graduation which was held the same
week as the D-Day invasion. Always interested in biology and the environment,
she received her undergraduate degree from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine in
1948. She then earned a Master's degree in Zoology while a Teaching Fellow at
Smith College in Northampton, MA in 1950, a time when few women pursued
graduate degrees, especially in a STEM field.
Their respective roommates in Northampton introduced Barbara to Gordon
Muise. Barbara and Gordon double-dated with the couple who set them up by
walking to the movies. They fell in love listening to pianist, Ben Light, on the
jukebox and taking long evening walks in Look Park. They wed in 1950, the same
weekend they graduated; Gordon from the University of Massachusetts and
Barbara from Smith College. The marriage lasted 61 loving years until Gordon’s
death in 2011. Gordon and Barbara raised five children: Carolyn, Leonard, Allan,
Elaine, and David who all graduated from Westborough High School in
Westborough, MA. Always active, Barbara rode the rapids in the Grand Canyon
with her grandsons, Nathan and Carlos Srinivas. She rafted and went hot air
ballooning with her granddaughters, Seyla and Eliza Muise. Barbara visited the
Galapagos Islands, hiked in Switzerland and climbed volcanos in Iceland. She
spent many nights in Appalachian Mountain Club huts as she backpacked miles of
trails all over New England.
Barbara taught the introductory comparative anatomy and horticulture labs for
26 years at Wellesley College in Wellesley, MA. She helped run the Unitarian
Universalist Congregationalist Society of Westborough serving on the Religious
Education Committee, the Board of Trustees, the Finance Committee, as a Sunday
School teacher, as Collector, and received the Indge Family Service Award.
Barbara also volunteered as a Girl Scout Troup Leader; for the Westborough
Community Land Trust; at Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston, at the
Gettysburg battlefield; at Colonial Williamsburg, and with the EcoTarium in
Worcester.
To order memorial trees or send flowers to the family in memory of BARBARA JEAN MUISE, please visit our flower store.
Guestbook
Visits: 112
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the
Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Service map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
