Barbara Edith Clemente

OBITUARY

Barbara ?Babs? (Clemente) Tucker

Barbara ?Babs? (Clemente) Tucker, 87, died on May 10, 2011.

She was born on May 1, 1924.

A resident of Westmore, ?Babs,? her older sister Bernice and her younger brother Bill, Lieutenant Commander, USN, spent summers at Pisgah Lodge boarding house, which was located near the south beach of Willoughby Lake.

In 1932, when Mrs. Tucker was eight years old, her father, Lieutenant Colonel William J. Clemente, and her mother, Barbara Clemente, purchased the old white farmhouse with the red tin roof on Long Pond Road in Westmore.

Mrs. Tucker and her late husband, ?Hap? Tucker, were born in East Rockaway, New York.  They lived there during the winter months until 1995.  Then they moved to Newtown Square, Pennsylvania.  After her husband died Mrs. Tucker lived with their youngest daughter, Dr. Elizabeth Tucker, in Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and throughout the Southwest, where Mrs. Tucker died peacefully at home in New Mexico, surrounded by family and friends.

Willoughby Lake was always her true love and she felt at home there in the mountains from May through October.

As a young girl, Mrs. Tucker spent time in her father?s heavy wooden rowboat floating and rowing from one end of the lake to the other.  She traveled every back road she could find, making new friends with everyone in her path.  Digging up wildflowers, stopping at every curve in the road, and then drying the flowers was one of her favorite pastimes.  Painting old sap buckets and choosing pictures from old magazines to cut and paste was something else she really enjoyed.  Also braiding rugs and knitting ? just anything homemade was her joy.  She never passed a farmstand, or barn sale, or auction.  She never missed a holiday parade or a Bread and Puppet event.

Every bend in the road in the Northeast Kingdom is engraved in her heart, as she is in all of our hearts, forever.  Mrs. Tucker will rest with Hap at Lakeview Cemetery in Westmore, overlooking their log cabin on the North Beach of Willoughby Lake.  Mr. and Mrs. Tucker had six children, eight grandchildren, and 13 great-grandchildren.

Burial will be in Lakeview Cemetery on July 5.  Please join family and friends at the cemetery at 10 a.m.  A reception will immediately follow at 379 North Beach Road log cabin.