Barbara Howard

Born April 10, 1947 in St. Cajetan parish to Robert Joseph and Edith May Nolan, Barbara was the second oldest of what would be six children. She would spend all but 13 years of her life living in view of Kennedy Park, and met her lifelong friend Marilyn Brennan on the block when they were four years old.

Barbara attended St. Cajetan Elementary during the peak of the Baby Boom, when the school was so crowded they had to create a morning shift and an afternoon shift. She graduated from Academy of Our Lady (Longwood) high school in 1965 and from St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, in 1969. Her Catholic faith guided her involvement in the civil rights, antiwar, and pro-labor movements of the 1960s and in a lifetime of volunteer service in many different organizations. She left a master’s program in Social Work at Boston University after one semester in order to marry Gilbert Wayne Howard, whom she had met at Notre Dame, and move to Pocahontas County, West Virginia, where he was teaching high school and she taught first grade. Their growing family moved to Charleston, West Virginia; Wayne’s hometown of Owensboro, Kentucky; and Russellville, Kentucky, before settling back on Chicago’s South Side in 1978, where Barbara cared for her ailing parents and her own eventual six children.

Barbara supplemented the family income by providing before- and after-school care for neighborhood children, eventually expanding her services to infants and toddlers as well. When her own children were old enough to watch themselves, she took on part-time work as an ESL and GED teacher at Daley College Adult Education program, rising to a management position.

After retiring from Daley in 2011, Barbara volunteered with the St. Cajetan SPRED Ministry and took courses at St. Xavier University’s Renaissance Academy.

Barbara was diagnosed with advanced stage ovarian cancer in 2023. In between chemotherapy, surgery, infusions, and medical appointments, she managed to travel to New Orleans for her oldest grandson’s college graduation and to San Francisco to meet her youngest granddaughter and attended activities and celebrated milestones for all of her grandchildren.

Barbara’s legacy of caregiving, community service, and lifelong learning lives on in her children and grandchildren. She is survived by her husband of over 56 years, Wayne; children Elizabeth Howard (Paul Wallace); Rachel Howard (Carter Wright); Ruth (James) Clarke; David (Melissa) Howard; Ann Howard (Kieran Devine); and Mary (Vinod) Kamath; grandchildren Josephine and Elias Wright; Gabriel Muthart; Margaret Clarke; Lucy and Thomas Howard; Callum Devine; and Mithali, Prashant, and Sravya Kamath; brother Michael (Mary Bryant) Nolan; sisters Edith Nolan (Harry Hopping) and Alice (Clayton) Shoup; sisters-in-law Daryce (Bob) Nolan; Rita (Mark) Heinz, Mary Sheila Howard, Carol Howard, Janice (Martin) Bumm, and Laura (the late James) Mattingly; brother-in-law Fr. Randy Howard; and many nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews, and cousins. She is preceded in death by her parents, Robert Joseph (1909-1981) and Edith May (1919-1979) Nolan; sister Mary Ann Nolan (1945-2004); and brother Robert Emmett Nolan (1948-2019).

In lieu of flowers, donations to SPRED will be accepted in her name.

Spred.archchicago.org

A visitation will be held on Tuesday September 8, 2026 from 4:00pm until 8:00pm at Andrew J. McGann and Son Funeral Home, with chapel prayers on Wednesday September 9, 2026 beginning at 10:00am then follow in procession to St. Cajetan Catholic Church 2445 W 112th St, Chicago, IL 60655 for a Mass of Christian Burial at 11:00am. Interment Mt. Olivet Catholic Cemetery to immediately follow.