Obituary of Charlotte JoHanna Barrows

Charlotte K. Barrows, 95, passed away at home in Danbury on January 29, 2023, a week before her 96th birthday. A lifelong resident of Danbury, she was born on February 5, 1927 to Jennie Deferari Kaidy of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and K. Frank Kaidy of Baskinta, Lebanon. In 1962, she married the late Jack Barrows, an artist and illustrator, and is survived by two sons, Bruce Barrows of Danbury and Paul de Barros of San Francisco, California, daughter-in-law Patricia Barrows of Danbury, and son-in-law Steven Macaris of San Francisco, California. Charlotte was a founding member of St. Gregory the Great Church, where she remained an active parishioner for 60 years. Among her other church activities, she enjoyed teaching religious education to second graders.

After graduating from Danbury High School in 1943 and the University of Bridgeport at the end of WWII, she undertook a career as a medical secretary, working at Halloran General on Staten Island, at the time the largest army hospital in the world, and later at Danbury Hospital. Characteristically unflappable, she would perch on a windowsill there, taking dictation during autopsies. In the 1950s, she began a longtime position at Consolidated Controls in Bethel (now Eaton Corporation), as Executive Secretary to the President. She worked at the company until her marriage in 1962, when she left to become a fulltime homemaker. In 1979, she returned to Eaton where she worked until she retired.
    
During a volunteer career that spanned five decades, she served on the Board of Directors of the Richter Arts Association, Chaired the Mayor’s Commission on the Status of Women and the Danbury Commission on the Aging, and taught computer skills at the Danbury Senior Center’s SeniorNet program. She was also a pioneering advocate of Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) programs in the Danbury School System.
    
She and husband Jack, who met at Arthur Murray’s, remained avid ballroom dancers throughout Jack’s life. Other passions included travel, beginning in the 1940s with a four-week bus trip from Danbury to Mexico City and back (her mother plotted her daily itinerary by moving a pin on a giant wall map). In the 1950s, she boarded one of the first trans-Atlantic commercial flights to Europe. Friendly, curious, and compassionate, she easily formed friendships that lasted a lifetime.
    
From the first sign of spring to the last afternoons of fall, she devoted herself to gardening, planting and transplanting, following her ever-evolving imagination for possibilities (Jack, with shovel in hand, once remarked that Charlotte rearranged trees like other people rearranged furniture). Before the snows fell, she would harvest the flower seeds, saving them through the winter until she could return them to the earth, where they would bloom again.
    
A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 10am February 8, 2023 at St Gregory the Great, 85 Great Plain Rd., Danbury. Family and friends are invited to pay their respects Tuesday, February 7, 2023 from 5pm – 7pm at Cornell Memorial Home, 247 White St in Danbury.  Burial to follow in Wooster Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Charlotte's memory may be made to the Richter Association for the Arts or to the charity of your choice