Seniors columnist loved her craft and her audience
Barb Ford had a passion for writing.
The seniors columnist who may be remembered by longtime Windsor Star readers by her more formal Barbara Ford byline died Sunday at age 88.
She wrote the Star’s first regular column about seniors for 18 years and jumped into the role in her mid-40s, long before she could join the activities or faced the challenges she wrote about weekly for seniors.
“She thought it was kind of funny,” said her son Ron Ford of London, where his mother had lived since 2016. “She was getting herself prepared for being a senior.”
In 1995, Ford wrote her final Windsor Star column and recalled when former Star editor Carl Morgan had invited her to submit a regular column on senior citizens. “I said, ‘Great,’ and began wondering what seniors did,” she wrote.
She continued in her farewell column that she loved interviewing and writing about active seniors. “Time after time they would phone me after the column was printed to say they had heard from old school friends and people they had lost touch with, who had read the interviews. That was fun.”
Ford wrote columns on her Remington typewriter, which irked editors at the time who had to get a junior employee to retype the columns into the computer system. She saved all her newspaper articles and columns in scores of scrapbooks, her son said.
Ford had written for three newspapers starting in 1963: the Burlington Gazette, the Essex Times and the Windsor Star. She had also co-written a book in the 1960s on the history of Burlington called From Pathway to Skyway which was used in schools there.
“She really enjoyed it. She loved being a reporter and doing the seniors column,” said her son Ron.
He remembers helping put together the freshly printed Essex Times, a small weekly paper, and when she gave him her media pass to the 1976 Canadian Open at the Essex Golf and Country Club. “Back then they were so friendly. (I met) Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus — my two idols at the time. I still have their signatures somewhere.”
People in Windsor will remember Ford as the church secretary at Roseland United Church for 25 years before she and her husband David moved into their Kingsville cottage, and her involvement with Gesstwood Camp in Essex.
Ron said his mom really enjoyed talking with people and he’ll remember the joy she had conversing with her grandchildren and hearing what was on their minds.
Ford is survived by three children, four grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Visitation is at Victoria Greenlawn Funeral Home at 1525 Highway 3 in Oldcastle on Thursday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. There will also be time for visitation on Friday at 10 a.m. until the chapel service at 11 a.m.
She really enjoyed it. She loved being a reporter and doing the seniors column.