Barbara S. Goldsmith

Barbara S. Goldsmith, of West Orange, NJ, and Sarasota, FL, died on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. She was 72 and died of cancer. Born December 28, 1943, in New York City, to parents who had emigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe, she attended public schools in The Bronx, NY. At 16 years of age, she attended Beaver College (now Arcadia University), where she majored in biology. In 1960, during a co-ed freshman dance with nearby Lafayette College, she met her future husband, who she married seven years later. On their first date, they talked for hours about the recent loss of her father to cancer, and of the strains of adjusting to life on a college campus far from their home communities. Her first job after college was in a medical laboratory at Albert Einstein Medical Center. She subsequently became one of the first women inspectors for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the late 1960s. After marrying in 1967, she moved to West Orange, NJ, where she had two daughters.

With the full support of her husband, she joined the first night class of Rutgers School of Law-Newark in 1975. Following her graduation in 1979, she clerked for NJ Appellate Division Judge John Crane, and then worked at the Newark, NJ, law firm of Crummy Del Deo Dolan and Purcell (now known as Gibbons). She earned a Master of Laws (LLM) degree in tax from New York University. In 1986, she moved with her family to Short Hills, NJ, before moving back to West Orange and Sarasota, FL, in 2009. In the early 1980s, she became a Deputy Attorney General of New Jersey, working for five years representing the Department of Banking, and then for 20 years representing New Jersey Transit. There she specialized in real estate transactions needed to build some of the state's most ambitious transportation projects. Among the professional achievements she was proudest of are the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, the Newark Light Rail, and AirTran, the Newark Airport Monorail. A lifelong animal lover, she was a docent at the Turtle Back Zoo.

In addition to her husband, Richard Goldsmith, she is survived by her two daughters, Meredith Goldsmith, and Rebecca Goldsmith Freedman and her husband Michael Freedman; three grandchildren, Leo and Sonia Freedman, and Micah Goldsmith; a sister, Cynthia Sternberg; and sisters-in-law Joan Goldsmith and Diane Fairbank.

Services will be held 11:00AM Thursday, March 24, at Bernheim Apter Kreitzman Suburban Funeral Chapel in Livingston, NJ. In lieu of flowers, donations preferred to the Zoological Society of NJ or the National Council of Jewish Women.