We are very sad to say that Geralyn Wood Barry passed away on
Wednesday, July 24th, 2024 in Alexander City, Alabama after a tough
battle with pancreatic cancer. She had enough plans of things to knit
and gardens to grow and genealogy to research to occupy her for many
hundreds of years and tomorrow she would have thought of more. We are
grateful for the time we had with her and hope that her love for life
will live on in everyone that she knew.
Geralyn was born on March 27, 1956 in Battle Creek, Michigan, the
daughter of Charles John Wood and Margaret Cecilia McKenna. Her father
would kid her and tell her that she came from a Post Toasties Cereal
box. She is survived by her husband of 41 years, William Anthony
Barry, her sister-in-law Diane Hightower (Barry), brother-in-law Frank
Barry (Melissa), nieces Olivia and Sara Hightower and Mallory Barry,
nephew Connor Barry and special friend Mary Allardt.
Geralyn was interested in what seemed like a broad range of things but
which in her mind were all interconnected. She approached life with an
intense interest, always asking questions, reading and self
reflecting. Her internal model of the world was very, very detailed
and always under construction.
She was at her core an artist and created beautifully detailed
objects. She loved working with clay and was an assistant in the clay
studio at Linn Benton Community College in Corvallis, Oregon. She
loved yarn, its colors and textures. She used it to knit sweaters,
shawls, leggings, hats, fine beaded purses and lately had been
exploring the best way to knit socks. She sewed, painted ceramics,
painted religious Icons, and was a skilled calligrapher and
photographer.
She was a genealogist who deeply understood the records she researched
and was especially interested in early 1800’s Irish research. Her
mother’s family and some of Bill’s family were from Ireland and the
records from that time period are very sparse and difficult to
interpret, just the kind of thing Geralyn loved.
She gardened everywhere she lived and loved growing and eating
wonderful, healthy food. She loved growing all kinds of tomatoes and
always knew who had developed the seeds of those tomatoes and why.
She loved music and was once the church organist at St. Bede’s
Catholic Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
She was a mathematician who knew emphatically when she had proved something.
She studied mathematics engineering and taught thermodynamics at
Auburn University where she wrote a paper on boundary layer heat
transfer. She was a statistics graduate student at the University of
North Carolina and was a physics graduate student at Lehigh
University.
She was a computer programmer and worked for a short time at IBM
writing part of a program to control a machine that carved letters in
key buttons.
She loved traveling, camping, hiking and was always figuring out
different routes to drive from Alabama to her home in Philomath,
Oregon.
She biked, lifted weights and was a long time runner. Until a couple
of months ago she could still run sub 10 minute miles.
Evident to all who knew her was what a caring person Geralyn was. She
was helpful to friends and in the clay studio where she was an
assistant. She was a caretaker for her mother, her aunt, Mary McKenna
and her mother-in-law, Rita Barry.
She will be so very dearly missed.
A memorial dinner is being planned for Geralyn. Please contact the
family if you wish to attend.
In lieu of donations and flowers. remember Geralyn as you go about
life and look for the interconnectedness and beauty of the world
around you.
