December 22, 1926 — March 5, 2024
Westborough—Barbara Fienemann Muise was born in Danvers, MA, in 1926 to Henry and Edna (Harriman) Fienemann. Throughout her school years, she played field hockey, softball, and basketball.
A World War II Air Raid Warden, Barbara was the Class Honors Speaker at her Reading, MA High School graduation which was held the same week as the D-Day invasion. Always interested in biology and the environment, she received her undergraduate degree from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine in 1948. She then earned a Master’s degree in Zoology while a Teaching Fellow at Smith College in Northampton, MA in 1950, a time when few women pursued graduate degrees, especially in a STEM field.
Their respective roommates in Northampton introduced Barbara to Gordon Muise. Barbara and Gordon double-dated with the couple who set them up by walking to the movies. They fell in love listening to pianist, Ben Light, on the jukebox and taking long evening walks in Look Park. They wed in 1950, the same weekend they graduated; Gordon from the University of Massachusetts and Barbara from Smith College. The marriage lasted 61 loving years until Gordon’s death in 2011.
Gordon and Barbara raised five children: Carolyn, Leonard, Allan, Elaine, and David who all graduated from Westborough High School in Westborough, MA. Always active, Barbara rode the rapids in the Grand Canyon with her grandsons, Nathan and Carlos Srinivas. She rafted and went hot-air ballooning with her granddaughters, Seyla and Eliza Muise. Barbara visited the Galapagos Islands, hiked in Switzerland and climbed volcanos in Iceland. She spent many nights in Appalachian Mountain Club huts as she backpacked miles of trails all over New England.
Barbara taught the introductory comparative anatomy and horticulture labs for 26 years at Wellesley College in Wellesley, MA. She helped run the Unitarian Universalist Congregationalist Society of Westborough serving on the Religious Education Committee, the Board of Trustees, the Finance Committee, as a Sunday School teacher, as Collector, and received the Indge Family Service Award. Barbara also volunteered as a Girl Scout Troup Leader; for the Westborough Community Land Trust; at Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston, at the Gettysburg battlefield; at Colonial Williamsburg, and with the EcoTarium in Worcester.
Barbara loved sitting outside in the early mornings with a cup of coffee and a good book. She tended a huge vegetable garden at the family home and then the rose gardens, greenhouse, and hummingbird garden at the Willows active retirement community, both in Westborough. Barbara thanks God for the truly happy life she lived.
She passed away on March 5, 2024, at the Beaumont Nursing Home in Westborough, MA.
