Barbara Ann Eberhart

Barbara Ann Gabel was born July 22, 1920, the youngest of 7 children from Conrad and Catherine Gabel, of Fort Lupton, Colorado. Barbara grew up in Fort Lupton on a farm and moved to Brighton, “to town,” with her parents as a teenager and graduated from Brighton High School.

After high school, she began nurses training in the School of Nursing at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Denver, Co. She became a Registered Nurse and worked and played in downtown Denver with her friends and classmates until the attack at Pearl Harbor changed the lives of an entire generation.

Many of her classmates went to the South Pacific as Army Nurses but Barbara stayed at St. Joseph’s as one of the few nurses still caring for the people in our Denver community. In 1942, she met a soldier, who was training at Lowry Field, at the drive in theater. “Adopt a Soldier” week soon followed and 3 soldiers asked her and two gal pals and they made a date to go dancing at the Rainbow Ballroom. That’s when Barbie and Louis got together. She married Louis E. Eberhart on June 3, 1943 before he shipped to Europe.

While Louis was gone, she lived in Denver with her oldest sister Kate, she continued working at the hospital and the sisters would always find time to go to the movies after work. They saw every Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, Carey Grant, you get the picture (ha!).

The war was long and brutal but when Louis came home she moved to be with him near the camp in Sioux Falls, South Dakota where he was mustering out. They bought their first house in 1946, on Glencoe St. in Denver. Karen was born in 1947, Tony in 1951, and Ann in 1953.

The years between 1945 and 1985, Barbara and Lou worked. Barbara continued her nursing career while raising a family and becoming land lords to supplement their income and the expenses of a growing family. Real Estate spreads, almost viral, having one rental then convinced to buy another, the “land lady” business grew until at one point they had 22 rental properties, oh my!

Louis died from complications of a ruptured aortic aneurysm in 1985 leaving Barbara widowed at the age of 65. Being a widow is hard, she sold off her real estate holdings, a game that sours quickly after the death of ones partner. She traveled a little, learned to golf, enjoyed the casinos, but mostly spent time with her children and her sister, Helen.

In 1995, Barbara purchased the house in Golden, next door to her youngest daughter Ann and Michael, her son in law. She lived there for 27 years, the longest she lived in any house, ever. But alas, age and circumstance took Barbara to assisted living in Littleton. She continued to delight her family, 5 grandchildren, and 11 great grand children up until the day of her death, November 20, 2023. She was 103 years old.