Moeller, lifelong advocate for Glen Burnie, dies at 80
If Barbara Moeller committed to something, that something would be seen through. A n d throughout her life, her biggest commitment was to her hometown of Glen
Burnie.
Moeller would often jest that she was married to the northern Anne Arundel County suburb. A regular face at carnivals, fundraisers, socials and even the North Pole, or something close to it, Moeller had her hands in many of the things that have long made and continue to make Glen Burnie a community.
The longtime volunteer and advocate died Thursday morning at Baltimore Washington Medical Center after a brief illness. Preceded in death by her father, Frank; mother, Elizabeth; and friend Sharon Engler, she was 80.
Afternoon and evening visitations will be held Monday and Tuesday at Singleton Funeral & Cremation Services on Crain Highway. A funeral service will be held Wednesday at 10 a.m. at the Singleton chapel, followed by an interment at Glen Haven Memorial Park.
Moeller’s interests and vision for Glen Burnie were far-reaching. As a leader, she maintained and created traditions, helped arrange activities for children and pushed Anne Arundel officials to invest in the historic heart of the community. Less than a month before she died, she attended her last meeting to revitalize the Glen Burnie Town Center, an effort she had supported for decades.
A decades-long president of the Glen Burnie Improvement Association, Moeller was immortalized with a small “superblock” road dedicated to her, Barbara Moeller Way.
Candy Fontz, who knew Moeller as a volunteer and friend for nearly 40 years, said the road couldn’t have had a better name.
“It’s appropriate,” Fontz said. “In life, it’s always Barb’s way. She’s passionate. She’s tenacious. And she’s not subtle in her way to get things done. She got results.”
Born in Baltimore in 1943, Moeller moved to Glen Burnie with her parents when she was 5. She attended local schools, eventually and proudly graduating from Glen Burnie High
School in 1961.
With this background, a theme in Moeller’s life emerged: reaching toward the past to influence the present and future. Not only did she bring alumni together for annual dances, she became a founding member of the Glen Burnie High School Wall of Honor Committee, which spotlights graduates throughout the school’s history to show students what’s possible.
For her volunteer work in the community, Moeller’s name remains on that wall, one of many honors she humbly received throughout her life.
A simpler, telling award came in 1993. Before her time as its president, the improvement association bestowed her with a $100 prize as its third Richard Carter Memorial Award recipient for community involvement. Moeller donated the money to the Multiple Sclerosis Society, a group she had volunteered with for years, inspired by Engler, her close friend who fought the disease. The funds, she announced at the time, would be used to help transport members to games at local bowling alleys.
As an employee at Severna Park Lanes, Fontz met Moeller in the mid-1980s during those bowling outings. She recalled Moeller finding ways to make sure the games were adaptive, accessible and competitive for the participants every week, years before disability accommodations were written into law.
However, it wasn’t until Fontz joined the improvement association that the two formed a partnership. And from that partnership, they became family.
“My world changed forever yesterday,” Fontz said in an interview Friday. “And I hope the community will realize how much her death will affect our future. Barb led everything. She was a charging force.”
Moeller’s work with the improvement association was committed to maintaining a community feeling in Glen Burnie, an area that had been the subject of failed development and had, by the mid-1990s, become more or less a row of stale malls along the highway.
Establishing a bike unit with the county police department, she encouraged officers to engage in the kind of “walk the beat,” community-oriented policing of her childhood. Also, throughout the year, the association would put banners on display throughout downtown Glen Burnie — like tulips in the springtime, stars and stripes in the summer and snowmen in the winter. Always attentive to detail, Moeller would help restore the weather-worn banners, repainting by hand the spots faded from the beating sun.
“It was soothing for her,” Fontz said, “another way to show her dedication to the community, but also an example of her being a responsible steward of the association’s money.”
Moeller’s responsibilities were carried out with fierce, sometimes intimidating determination.
District 2 Council member Allison Pickard met Moeller on the campaign trail in her first attempt at the county seat. She realized quickly that she would have to earn Moeller’s respect — and therein, that of the Glen Burnie community.
When she won the 2022 election, Pickard knew her work with Moeller was only just beginning.
“It made me as a newly elected official want to make sure I represented and served her community to the best of my ability,” Pickard said of Moeller’s dedication to her home. “She’s an inspiring figure, and it sort of helped keep me accountable to what the best of local government could be.”
Over time, the two developed a powerful working relationship. Pickard’s legislative aide Kristen Etzel was on Moeller’s speed dial, the council member said, making sure potholes were fixed and traffic lights were working. Pickard described Moeller as “the eyes and ears” of Glen Burnie.
Both women also worked together on the town center’s revitalization plan.
For many years, Glen Burnie’s “superblock,” a strip between Crain and Ritchie highways that acted as a hotspot for residents in the 1950s, was in a useless standstill. Although development efforts ran out of money in the 1980s, victories began to take shape in the years thereafter, bringing the community closer to what leaders like Moeller felt were its heyday.
Working with Moeller on the project, Pickard called her “a bulldog.”
“She was always ready to dig in and bring a revitalized vision of Glen Burnie to life,” Pickard said. “She was a force.”
Through her work, Moeller believed in building a well-rounded community, complete with activity and accessibility. For instance, Fontz said she was “instrumental” in securing a grant for the property and building that became the Glen Burnie Recreation Association dance studio. As a leader of the improvement association, she also made its property available to emergency personnel for expos and movie nights, as well as local soccer teams and even a baseball hobby league played in the style of the 19th century.
Perhaps Moeller’s biggest and most recognized work was in her capacity as an organizer and chair of the century-old Big Glen Burnie Carnival. Consisting of food stands, rides and other attractions, the annual carnival required hundreds of volunteers every year to pull off — Pickard described it as “a shining example of community coming together.”
With its first showing in 1908, the Big Glen Burnie Carnival was an annual spectacle for over 110 years, until 2020, when the improvement association had to comply with COVID19 regulations and cancel. To that point, the carnival had pushed through a flu epidemic, two world wars, a depression that ravished the 1930s and another paralyzing recession in 2008.
On what would have been the first and last nights of that year’s carnival, its executive committee gathered in the lot where it would have taken place. Spaced out in lawn chairs, they ate hot dogs and reminisced, listening to the setlist that accompanied the event.
“The community couldn’t participate,” Fontz said, “but that carnival meant so much to us and to Barbara that we needed that in our souls.”
Traditionally, in the weeks leading up to the carnival, Moeller hired local teenagers as “stock staff ” to help prepare the fairgrounds. With a strong whistle, she would sometimes intimidate the kids, Fontz said, but a little bit of fear would feed into what became a strong, impressionable first job.
“Local employers knew if you worked with Barbara Moeller at stock staff, you were responsible, detaildriven,” Fontz said. “You couldn’t be a slacker around Barbara Moeller.
The job would often lead to a lasting relationship with Moeller, as well. Last year, a tribute was held in honor of Moeller’s 30th anniversary as chair of the carnival. Many stock staff employees attended, and although they might have mumbled when they were under her employment, Fontz said they came back and praised Moeller for the work ethic she instilled in them.
Former stock staffers will serve as pallbearers during Moeller’s funeral on Wednesday.
Those who spoke of Moeller described her loss as more of a hole in the community than anything else.
Pickard, though, felt her example could act as an opportunity.
“This is a call to action, not only for Glen Burnie, but other communities as well,” Pickard said. “She was the best of the best. How do we emulate her commitment? How do we do that? We all need to be engaged in our community.”