Barbara Ruth Hahn Smith

Des Moines

Barbara Ruth Smith was born at the height of the Depression in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She and her three siblings grew up in West Des Moines when her father found work at the Solar Aircraft Plant during WWII. She went on to Valley High School and joined her father at Solar before she married. She already had three small children before her first open-heart surgery that vastly relieved the symptoms from the damage left by a bout of rheumatic fever when she was 12. Four years after the birth of her fourth child, Barbara’s marriage ended and she moved, with the four youngsters, to Dallas, Texas.

With no child-support and her earning power limited by the pre-feminist era in Texas governed by the Napoleonic code, Barbara often worked two full-time jobs to ensure she raised her children in a home filled with books and a sense of pride and security. When heart failure returned after a decade, she moved back to Des Moines to provide the safety of an extended family to her children as they entered their teen-years in the turbulent 70s.

By this time, she used her self-taught bookkeeping skills to find steady and fulfilling employment in several small businesses. Her home in the Drake neighborhood often overflowed with friends and family on Sunday jam sessions with a pot of chili in the kitchen and some radical or esoteric conversation on the front porch. She saw her kids through school and into their own homes and marriages.

She was an early pioneer in attempting to secure enforcement of child support orders. In her letters to the editor and communications with the courts, she found an enduring passion for the written word. In those long-ago days before e-mail, Barbara’s correspondence often led to gatherings around coffee, with friends of friends insisting on their turn to read the colorful, oft times sarcastic, always insightful letters.

Her heart was broken, figuratively and literally in 1981, when she both lost her youngest son and required her second open-heart surgery. This time, University of Iowa Hospitals implanted the cutting edge, convex/concave prosthetic mitral valve. When the manufacturer recalled the valve a few years later and offered to replace it free of charge, Barbara declined, declaring, “They didn’t put it in with a zipper, you know.” Regardless of the possible faulty strut, the valve served her well for another 30 years.

She continued to work and made dear friends with the families at Des Moines Marble and Mantle Company before she retired. She finally had the time to read (voraciously), travel (timidly) and work her crossword puzzles (in ink, if you please). She often said retirement is the best job she ever had, and if you count the naps, it took all day.

When heart failure finally won its lifelong battle on August 1, 2016, she was surrounded by her extended family, visited by dear friends and loved ones, and peacefully followed both her parents, George and Ruth Riley Hahn, her son, Sean Edward Smith, two brothers, George and Gerald Hahn, and dear friends Darleen Griffith and Michael Krietz into the great unknown.

She is survived by her son, James Wilson Smith, Jr, and daughters, Lorraine Gaddini-Smith (Angela) and Michelle Brandenburg (Roger), granddaughter and one great-grandchild, Madison and Amelia Speck, sister, Susan E. Gilbert, many nieces and nephews and treasured friends including her friend of 68 years, Beverly Whetstone.

Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. Friday, August 5, 2016 at McLaren’s Chapel in West Des Moines with entombment at Resthaven Mausoleum. Visitation will be from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, August 4, 2016 at McLaren’s Chapel. Memorial contributions may be directed to Habitat for Humanity.