Barbara Doherty, beloved mother, grandmother, friend, mother figure to many, and long-time candy store owner and bed and breakfast host, died on February 25, 2023. She was 89 years old.
As a girl, Barbara learned the skills that would define her for a lifetime: hard work, compassion, good humor and how to make friends. Her mother, Marie, was, like Barbara herself, a playful font of goodwill. Her father, Charles Fendrych, was a mid-level railroad executive, resulting in the family moving every few years, including to New York, New Jersey and Ohio. He died when Barbara was twenty, after which time she supported herself.
In the mid-1950s-60s, after graduating Boston University, she worked in turn as a waitress, secretary, teacher, bookkeeper and ski bum. Her most formative employment experience was teaching 5th grade in Roxbury, Massachusetts for two years. There, she worked and laughed with students she would never forget, and developed her “teacher voice” that could ever afterwards control a room.
Upon marrying Ben Doherty, she moved to Winchester, Mass, where she made many lifelong friends and had three children: Greg, Glen and Katie. She was a loving, patient, constructive, fun, funny parent.
In the early 1980s she opened The Candy Castle in downtown Lexington, Mass, a daily mecca for kids who filled baskets with penny candy and their parents who liked the good stuff in the cases. It gave her great joy to be a vital part of the community, and many, many people fondly recall their daily interactions with her over sweets.
To many friends of her children, as well as several long-term guests in her home, she was a kind of surrogate mother, “Mama D.” Her house was a second home to her children’s friends during their teenage years and early twenties—a home where she provided, as she did to her own kids, a wonderful balance of unconditional love with well-timed come-to-Jesus advice. It didn’t hurt that she gave winking permission for those she cared about to raid the Candy Castle with abandon.
Another source of lifelong friends for her was Sandy Island, a family camp on Lake Winnipesaukee that the Dohertys attended for a week in August each year. For this group, a happy hour with old friends and contraband alcohol as the sun set over the water was life at its best.
It was with a great sigh of relief that she separated from Ben in the 1980s. She eventually moved to Woburn, where she befriended more wonderful neighbors. She ran a bed and breakfast, “The Birches,” out of her home, bringing in a constant stream of guests with whom to trade stories and reading lists. Many became regulars, then friends. The network of people to whom Barbara was a fun, sage and caring friend is vast.
Her home, which was backed up against the woods, was an oasis. Barbara was an avid gardener and feeder of birds and wildlife, so her yard looked like a Disney movie, ever-bustling with songbirds, squirrels, chipmunks, turkeys, foxes, skunks, and more. One story she would tell with delight was of the turkey hen who, at the first thaw after one particularly snowy winter, called to her across the yard, opened her wings and showed off three new chicks. It was a thank-you gesture for all the days Barbara had beaten a path to leave food out. Those poults would eventually grow up and have their own young that frequented the yard.
After selling the Candy Castle in the early 2000s, she worked for a decade or so for a chocolate distributor, then for a decade or so at the Woburn Senior Center, which she found to be a great community and resource. She was a generous champion of a wide array of causes, especially food banks and animal rescues. In her free time, her fondest memories came from traveling with friends around the world and time with her grandchildren. She was also a frequent patron of the Woburn Public Library, which served her voracious reading habit and which she found architecturally beautiful. She was a woman of many strong beliefs, and one was that anyone who bought a book was a fool.
In 2012, her son Glen, a former Navy SEAL, died in combat in Libya. This tragedy, which received much public attention, showed a much broader audience Barbara’s strength and grace as she consistently took the high road with every challenge that arose. The process also led to several other deep friendships for her.
She hated her middle name, so it will not be mentioned here.
She is survived by her son, Greg, of Kensington, California, and daughter-in-law, Alice; her daughter, Katie Quigley, of Marblehead, Mass, and son-in law, Mark; five grandchildren: Jack, Thomas, Cameron, Naomi and True; and the best friends, neighbors and communities that anyone could ever hope for.
A Funeral Mass will be held at St. Eulalia's Church, 51 Ridge St., Winchester, at 10AM on Saturday, June 17th, with a reception immediately following at the Mabardy residence, 211 Ridge St., Winchester.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Glen Doherty Memorial Foundation, the The Mara Elephant Project or to St. Vincent de Paul.