My family and I were blessed with an angel when Barbara Germaine Larrabee married our widower dad Russ in October 1960.
I know. Most children consider their moms an angel for countless reasons. But our mom truly was an angel. And she never wavered from that lofty position during the 48 years they were man and wife and lived the entirety in Danvers.
She had never married, and believed she might remain a single woman, when she met and fell in love with Russ and tied the knot, when she was 34. Her decision to marry carried with it life-altering circumstances.
While a few friends and family members cautioned her about making the leap into Russ’ arms, there were far more who encouraged her.
She would be giving up her hard-earned career advancement as chief of OR nurses at prestigious Hartford (Connecticut) Hospital to move to Danvers.
Equally dramatic, she would be stepping into a hornet’s nest of a Larrabee family home that featured three sons: Bob, 16, Gary, 11, and Mark, 4, as well as Russ’ mother-in-law, Gladys Moulton.
Gladys had been coming and going into the home for several years while her daughter, Barbara, my birth mother, coped with serious illness until she died in 1957 while we lived in Manchester, Connecticut.
Gladys had been a godsend, serving as a surrogate mother, but Barbara Shirley Germaine became the angel this tragedy-marred family needed.
Our new mom took several months to understand the swing of things of a home filled with men of all ages on Glendale Drive, while Gladys, beloved “Nana” to the boys, was set up comfortably in an apartment a block off Danvers Square on Cherry Street.
The talented new Mrs. Larrabee, anxious to bring additional income into the family coffers and resume her career, knowing three college tuitions were in the future, took a flexible day shift position in the OR at Hunt Memorial Hospital on Danvers’ Lindall Hill. She loved nursing. She would later take a part-time evening shift position on a medical ward at Salem Hospital.
“Her burden was heavy between work and family life, but she loved it all,” my father must have told me a hundred times, “and she did it all with a smile.”
Her smile got even wider when she was able to become a mother to daughters twice, first to Tracy and then to Leslie (two more college tuitions to deal with), and became a grandmother to nine. She rejoiced daily over being blessed with all those grandchildren.
Better still, she became a big time Danvers High sports fan while rooting on Bob, Gary and Mark, taking in Danvers High hockey games while Tracy captained the cheerleading squad, and loved watching all the Boston sports teams on TV with Russ and the boys.
She also got to do major vacation travels with hubby to the Caribbean and Europe before they became annual Florida snowbirds once they retired.
Her perilous decision to take the plunge with boyfriend Russ paid off handsomely, She enjoyed a complete, fulfilling life with the Larrabees as a wife to Russ, and, from my perspective, an extraordinarily generous, sacrificing and loving mom to my two brothers, my two sisters, to me, and a grandmother to nine grandkiddies.
She was our angel for 50 years, until she passed in 2010.
Gary Larrabee lives in Wenham and was a member of The Salem News sports staff from 1971 to 1995.