Barbara Guberud

life story

Loved the lake and the loons

Barb at her beloved lake home on Blue Lake

Barb's Highlights

Barbara Jean was born on December 6th, 1928 in Sanborn, Minnesota to Cloyde Vern Brooks and Marcia Longfellow Pulver Brooks. As a young girl, she was treated to many adventures with her parents, older brother Stuart, and her Aunts and Uncles including trips to the Brainerd lakes area, where she found her love of northern MN lakes and loons. She learned to be a superb bridge player as a young girl. She went to high school in Eau Claire WI, but spent her senior year in Barron, WI. She graduated as valedictorian from Barron High School in 1946, gave the Valedictorian address and played a piano solo, Chopin’s “Military Polonaise”, at her graduation, a very challenging piece!

In 1948, Barb agreed to marry the love of her life, Bob Guberud, under a tall oak tree, just outside a formal dance organized by either her Alpha Delta Pi sorority or Bob's Chi Phi fraternity, at the Interlachen Country Club. Her parents insisted she finish her degree, and so she and Bob waited 2 long years until 1950, when she graduated from the U of MN with a degree in Interior Design (in hindsight she wished it had been in Accounting). She and Bob married on June 24, 1950, in the Barron Methodist Church. The two of them traveled to LaCrosse and then Philadelphia, where Barb worked as an interior designer. They returned to the midwest and settled in the Evanston and then Milwaukee area. In 1955 their first child, Bob (jr) was born. From 1955 to 1963, she and Dad had 5 kids (Bob, Mary, Jim, Tom and Jane). They moved from the Milwaukee area to Edina, MN in the summer of 1964, with all 5 kids under the age of 9 and a dog! The house they would live in for 34 years in Edina was just a skip from the country club where she and Bob were engaged. She had achieved her childhood dream of what she wanted to be when she grew up; “Married, with lots of kids!”. In 1973, she found the property outside Park Rapids on Blue Lake where she and Bob built her dream of having a lake home and she adored seeing us all enjoying lake life as much as she had as a young girl. She and Bob eventually also had a home in Green Valley, Arizona for the winters and came to cherish the desert and mountains there as well. She loved sewing, knitting, skiing and tennis. She adored her 2 wonderful grandsons, Dane and Cody and enjoyed many travels both before and after retirement. Barb kept skiing well into her 70s and could be seen knitting up until her final years. Barb and Bob celebrated their 71st wedding anniversary just this past June, and Bob never stopped singing love songs to Barb until her last breaths.

A small memorial service was held on Sunday 9/19 for immediate family. A future celebration of life will take place on a date yet to be determined.

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MEMORIAL DONATIONS:

American Diabetes Association: Camp Needlepoint

This cause was special to Barb. Diabetes ran in both her and Bob's family and one of their children acquired Type 1 Diabetes at age 11. Camp Needlepoint, is hosted by the St Paul affiliated YMCA Camp St. Croix in Hudson, WI, and gave Barb and her child the gift of a safe camp, where all the kids attending the session also had diabetes. At this camp having diabetes is the norm and if you aren't diabetic, YOU are the weird one! Kids are allowed to have a wonderful camp experience without feeling out of place. It allowed Barb and her daughter to not let the disease define either one of them, but to just be one of the many challenges we all face in life.

Donations to the American Diabetes Association Camp Needlepoint program help to provide children with diabetes an educational and memorable experience in a medically supervised setting. The generosity of donors allows ADA Camp Needlepoint to keep the fee families pay as reasonable as possible. Your tax deductible online gift to the program assists ADA to reach its goal of teaching children with diabetes that they are not alone in dealing with this disease.

Click here to donate directly to Camp Needlepoint:

https://donations.diabetes.org/site/Donation2?df_id=16520&16520.donation=form1&loc=dorg_camp&s_src=dorg&s_subsrc=camp

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Read more about Camp Needlepoint in this 2019 MPR article:

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/08/12/camp-needlepoint-kids-with-diabetes

memorial service

Memorial

September 19, 2021

A small memorial service was held on Sunday 9/19 for immediate family. A future celebration of life will take place on a date yet to be determined.