BARBARA ANN BRANDES (née Chojnacki), ASH
Remembering Edith Presbury, 1932-2004
by Ken Brandes
Only child of Dr. L. Chojnacki and Mary Lewis, Barbara was born in Amsterdam, NY, on July 5, 1932. She graduated from Buffalo State College at 21 with honors. She taught second grade, mainly in Lackawanna schools, till age 39. She then earned an MS in Library Science and admission into the Beta Phi Mu honor society at Syracuse University. She greatly enjoyed that year with students of similar interests. She then returned to teach another fourteen years.
She liked to travel, was interested in English, Italian, and Polish culture, volunteered at philharmonic and later WNED-TV, designed her own non-latch-hooked rugs, and loved reading. She found many literary friends in An Irish Secret Society at Buffalo, Bootmakers of Toronto, Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes, and other similar societies.
In 1986 she retired from teaching and most active social life due to Parkinson’s Disease. She risked life and mind with two operations for that, and another two for cancers. She very courageously battled and endured for eighteen years before dying on December 21, 2004, at age 72.
Survivors include her husband Kenneth of thirty-five years, sisters-in-law June Helmer and Edna Lehman of Wellsville, with aunt Florence Chojnacki and several cousins in the Buffalo area.
