She hailed from Medicine Lodge, Kansas and moved to Washington, D.C. at a young age to work for Kansas Senator Capper in the mid 1940s. A passionate American writer, artist, sculptor, painter, poet, and advocate for women right's and Down’s Syndrome citizens, Mrs. Westebbe lived in Greece, Zaire and New York, settling in Virginia.
She taught all 12 grades in a one room school house in Deerfield, Kansas at age 17, worked as one of the first women engineering illustrator for Culver Aircraft in Wichita and moved to Washington, D.C. in 1946 to work in Senator Capper’s office in Washington in the 1940s when she met her husband Richard Westebbe. They had their two oldest children while in Holland on Mr. Westebbe’s Fulbright, had their third child in northern Virginia and later moved to Greece where she learned to work with marble. Her marble sculptures were highly regarded by Greeks and Americans alike.
Barbara worked tirelessly on behalf of Down's Syndrome youth and adults, most particularly for her youngest daughter Susy who was born in Greece and turned 50 recently. She served several decades on the Board of Directors of the National Womens’ Party and later founded Life Conservation in Fredericksburg, Virginia as a nonprofit dedicated to improving the quality of life of the intellectually disabled. Barbara's legacy includes a beautiful homestead, the historic Smith-Forbes house, in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where Susy will continue to reside. She leaves behind her husband Richard, son Mark and his wife Carlene, daughter Shelly and her husband Jeffrey Kealing, son Bruce and his wife Misty, daughter Susy and grandchildren C'aira, Mark II, Matthew and John.
This blog shares images of her work and life starting with her youth in Kansas. She was born in the tiny farming community of Medicine Lodge, Kansas in 1925 in an era of drought and dust storms followed by the Great Depression. Having survived extreme hardship, she never took people or things for granted, making art out of leavings, bringing hope to hurt and damaged people with love. Although she was endowed with a volcano of creative energy, and finding her artistic voice early, she often put her work on the back burner to help others. Her passions led her away from home into an international journey. Barbara marched with Alice Paul for women’s rights in Washington, D.C., took care of four children and husband through several countries as his career grew.
One of her most productive periods during 7 years in Athens in the 1960s, when she created a body of artistic work that includes dramatic sculpted busts and paintings of Greece in the simpler, pre-EU years, in addition to her prolific body of work in the U.S. and Zaire. Barbara published poetry under the name of Collen Cody. The blog also shares photos of her family and important events in our lives. She will be buried on the Westebbe farm in which she loved dearly.
