BARBARA JEAN JAFFEE
affectionately nicknamed Barbara Bunny
Barbara Jean Sundquist, my little sun goddess, was born in Detroit on June 21, the summer solstice, in 1939.
In 1957, she graduated from Thurston High School in Redford Township, where she edited the school’s newspaper for three years and graduated at the top of her class. She was chosen to be on the College Bowl team; starred in the school play, January Thaw; and refused to participate in the Miss Thurston contest, which she viewed as inherently sexist, though she was later told that she had received the most votes for Miss Thurston.
Barbara, my sleeping beauty, was the first person in her family to go to college. Though she won several scholarships, including one from the P.T.A., she could not afford to attend the
University of Michigan, where she had been accepted.
Floyd Sundquist, Barbara’s father, sold his life insurance policy, so that he could help send Barbara off to another school that they could afford.
My little angel went to Western Michigan University for one year and then Wayne State University in Detroit for another year, before she was kicked out of her house by her mother.
As can often be the case when angels face adversity, Barbara transmuted what could have been a curse, or at least a dilemma, into a blessing.
Barbara saved up the money that she had earned from sewing and baby sitting, and she took what she believed to be the last propeller flight from Detroit out to L.A. in 1959.
After working for a year for an insurance adjuster and establishing her residency in Orange County,
California, my Bar-bar-barbara finished her B.A. in elementary education at Long Beach State.
She then got her teaching credential and started teaching public school kindergarten in Anaheim, a district in Orange County, in the early 1960s. She did so for 26 years.
She taught the first Head Start class and learned Spanish, so that she could communicate better with the parents of some of her students.
Every winter, she taught her students about Chanukah as well as Christmas, even though she did not believe that she ever had a Jewish child in her class.
Among other innovations, Barbara introduced her students to Macbeth.
Every Halloween, the kids would dress up as the three witches, wearing dark hats and carrying broomsticks, while they would gather around a cauldron and chant verse from Shakespeare: “Double, double, toil and trouble. Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”
The kids would then cackle with glee.
So much did her students love that Halloween class that, for the rest of most school years, the kindergartners would not infrequently ask Barbara if they could “do Shakespeare!”
Barbara enriched the lives of several generations of students in Anaheim. She became so renowned as a teacher that she had two waiting lists for her classes, one for 3-year-olds, one for 4-year-olds.
And Barbara’s class on Macbeth became quite well-known in other public school districts across the country, so much so that it was taught, without the originality or the love, at my own public school kindergarten in 1970 in Hamden, Conn., 3,000 miles away from Anaheim.
Barbara believed very deeply in the Bank Street School approach to teaching, a child-centric approach, in which teachers strive to bring out the unique gifts of each child.
While she was teaching kindergarten, Barbara later got a Masters degree in literature at Cal-State Fullerton.
During her years as a teacher, Barbara moved to Laguna Beach, where she wrote poetry that was published in several literary publications.
Always fascinated with film noir, Barbara later moved to the Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park not long after the movie, Chinatown, hit the theaters in the mid-1970s.
Barbara’s years in Echo Park in the mid-to-late 1970s would inspire her to write mystery novels that featured an amateur sleuth, a sweet but plucky female protagonist, modeled not surprisingly after Barbara herself.
One of Barbara’s manuscripts is titled Murder Prevents Suicide, and it is set partly in Echo Park, as well as in the fictional headquarters of a suicide prevention center in L.A.
Barbara was working on another mystery, A Murder in the Family, when I met her at a UCLA extension writing class in June 1996.
My little angel and I had a few dates at the end of that summer and in the autumn of 1996, but we did not start to date in earnest until July 1997.
At that time, in the summer of 1997, Barbara wrote and illustrated two charming children’s books about Barbara Bunny and Robert Rabbit, our alter egos.
During our 23 years together, Barbara also wrote a number of delightful children’s books about Carlitos, our fluffy, tuxedo cat, who passed away in 2005.
And Barbara wrote and illustrated many beautiful cards over the decades. Barbara’s cards and love notes are all works of art, and I have saved all of them.
A devotee of Bob Dylan’s music, Barbara introduced me to Dylan’s work in the late 1990s, which was yet another of her acts of love and generosity.
Bob Dylan has been a huge influence on me ever since, and Barbara deserves the credit for bringing the Bobster into my life.
Of course, no one has influenced me more than Barbara herself.
She is not only my Muse; Barbara was, is and always will be my J writer and an artist, whose “age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety,” as Shakespeare writes of Cleopatra.
As you peruse this section of our website, please do enjoy vintage images of 1950s Detroit.
I noted earlier that Barbara, my “precious angel” and “covenant woman,” in the words of Bob Dylan, grew up in Redford Township, a suburb of Detroit.
When she was a teenager, Barbara often took the bus from that suburb to downtown Detroit, where she would spend afternoons shopping at Hudson’s department store before having turkey sandwiches and soft drinks at Sanders lunch counter, located across the street on Woodward Ave.
She would sometimes walk over to the Detroit Institute of Arts and study the WPA murals, as well as sculptures, paintings and other works of art.
Decades later, after Barbara and I got married in 2001, we visited that art museum in Detroit, when we also had a chance to visit Barbara’s Aunt Lenora and cousin Ruth Ann.
The city had changed quite a bit in the nearly 50 years since Barbara had left Detroit. But Barbara still retained a love for her hometown.
And there is no end to love, especially in Southern California, where I met my Bar-bar-barbara.
Barbara used to refer to us as pooties, as I indicated in a recent piece I wrote for Thrive Global, “Rosalind, Hamlet, Barbara Bunny and Robert Rabbit.”
I published that piece on Sept. 2 of 2021, on the eve of the second anniversary of Barbara’s passing.
Though Barbara never defined the meaning of pooties, I took the word to mean that Barbara and I are part people, part cuties.
No matter what, we are besherets, soul mates.
In fact, Barbara and I are really the same person.
Barbara is just better looking, much better looking, as I have always pointed out.
We are still together in the ways that matter most, and we always will be.
I will be seeing you soon, sweet Barbara. I will grow up fast, as you used to say. Please keep waiting for me.
And we succeed, baby! We succeed!
Pooties forever, my love!
