Barbara O'Sullivan

Barbara O’Sullivan, daughter, sister, mom, friend, small-town librarian, crocheter of beautiful afghans, and feeder of all the little critters, died Monday, July 14th, 2025 in her Manahawkin home. A child of New Jersey of from a German-American family, Barbara grew up in Hillside and lived in parts north before moving down to the shore with her husband in the late 1970s.

In her decades of work for the Ocean County Library System, Barbara helped move the library from an old house in Ship Bottom, Long Beach Island, to its current location in Surf City. The bulk of her working years were spent at the Waretown library, a hamlet to the north where she loved working the children’s summer reading program. Rural libraries are many things: book repositories, gathering spots, computer labs, places to beat the heat, bastions against ignorance, fear and moral panic. She took pride in her work, and enjoyed the camaraderie of her hard-working and dedicated co-workers. And for anyone who remembers the iconic Woolworth’s in downtown Newark on Broad Street – that was her first job.

She and her husband Thomas were introduced through friends at a bar up north, and in 1977 they moved to the shore. They’d crab off the back deck of the lagoon behind their house, from which my mother would cook up crab royale. Later, as empty nesters, they’d go out to the Bridge to Nowhere to crab by hand line. Later in life, she enjoyed walks up by the Barnegat Lighthouse and around Beach Haven West.

At any time, Barbara’s home was filled with baskets and tubs containing skeins of yarn of every color. An experienced crocheter, she made dozens of afghan blankets throughout her life that spread across the state and nation in gifts to friends and family. Her gifts literally and figuratively warmed hearts all over.

It wasn’t always easy. By the time she graduated high school, her parents had both died, and Barbara worked early on in part to pay for needed dental work. She lost her husband in their 50s, and she had multiple heart surgeries and other health issues, and many dire trips to the hospital after her diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. A plastic ziplock bag in her purse held a stack of medical cards – pacemaker, heart valves, stents – for her many replacement parts. Sometimes she’d joke that she was becoming bionic.

Barbara didn’t spend all day blabbing about politics or religion like many, but lived a quiet life of example and resilience: kindness, generosity, avoiding harm and not pushing her ideas on others. She was a deep believer that it matters how you treat people, and she applied those ethics evenly. She liked neither Bill Clinton nor Donald Trump for the way they treated women. She took issue with the Catholic church’s ban on women in leadership. In the hospital, even on days was too weak to move and barely speak, she’d challenge visiting clergy about why women hadn’t been allowed to write the Bible. They all cooed in sympathy, but none gave a satisfying answer.

Even toward death, Barbara took great pleasure in the wonder of the natural world, feeding the creatures off her back deck and following the progress of the new Stafford library under construction. She indulged in cozy mysteries, Agatha Christie and Louis L’Amour stories, British TV shows, and licorice all-sorts. The night she said goodbye to her son, Barbara had a few bites of red velvet cake and watched a brilliant lightning storm ripple across the lagoon out back.

Barbara died at home, as she wanted. She is predeceased by her parents Frank and Catherine, her stepmother Rose, her sisters, Joan, Maryann and Catherine, and her husband Thomas. She is survived by son Joseph, Nala the cat, and those who came by her back-deck breakfast bar: Bubba the Seagull, the tern with the broken leg, Mr. and Mrs. Mallard and their spring chicks, assorted bluejays, cardinals, red-wing blackbirds, finches, and the chipmunk and the bunny. They were all with her in her final days.

A visitation for Barbara will be held Sunday, July 20, 2025 from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM at Thos L. Shinn Funeral Home, 10 Hilliard Drive, Manahawkin, NJ 08050. A visitation will occur Monday, July 21, 2025 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM, 10 Hilliard Drive, Manahawkin, NJ 08050. A committal service will occur Monday, July 21, 2025 from 12:00 PM to 12:15 PM at St Mary's Cemetery, Beachview Ave, Stafford Township, NJ 08050.