ABSTRACT
Barbara Egger Lennon (Barbe) filled the years after her retirement with a wide variety of activities that reflected and built on the interests developed over the prior sixty-plus years of her life. Discussions with Carroll’s elderly aunt at the couple’s wedding had affirmed Barbe’s fear that Carroll was a lazy spendthrift. Barbe wrote James Duncan numerous “personal” letters in which she demanded information to calm her fears, but he remained taciturn. In October 1955, the newlywed couple’s somewhat ambivalent reaction to the news of Barbi’s pregnancy upset Barbe. Barbe attended students’ birthday parties and weddings and witnessed numerous citizenship ceremonies. In the years after Duncan and Barbi’s marriage, the dynamic of her role as mother shifted, as her relationship with Duncan and his family changed over time. Apparently, Barbe had finally achieved some sense of peace with Duncan’s choices, and with that acceptance her role as mother, mother-in-law, and grandmother settled into one less fraught with friction.
