A Lifetime, A Legacy: Barbara McKeffery
Barbara McKeefery
Longtime Sea Isle residents Barbara and Robert McKeefery.
Sea Isle City’s Barbara McKeefery, 70, lived a life that chased the clouds away. She and her sunny disposition are sorely missed since her death last December.
The wife, mother, teacher, historian, and craftswoman worked in Sea Isle City’s public elementary school and in the Dennis Township School District for some 38 years. From 2013 until her death, she served as president and then curator of the Sea Isle City Historical Museum.
Moreover, Mrs. McKeefery actively volunteered for a number of local organizations, including: The Endicott-Reardon Family Museum, Upper Township PTO, Dennis Township Municipal Alliance Committee, and the Sea Isle City Fire Department as well as the Sea Isle City United Methodist Church’s and South Dennis Trinity United Methodist Church’s preschools.
Mrs. McKeefery’s parents Fred and Emma Fourqurean first moved to Sea Isle City in 1953, the same year as their daughter Barbara’s birth. From an early age, Barbara Fourqurean threw herself into efforts on behalf of the well-being of the community and its surroundings.
Boyle Finish Carpenters’ Mike Boyle will always remember the day he met Barbara Fourqurean at Sea Isle City Public School. As a new fifth-grade student there, Boyle showed up for school wearing shorts at the suggestion of a school principal. To his discomfort, no one else there wore shorts. Barbara Fourqurean appeared and said, “‘Nice shorts!’” Boyle recalls with a laugh. They immediately became friends. “She was a loyal, good friend,” he adds. “There’s something [special] about someone you've known all your life. I miss her.”
Left to right: A glimpse of Robert and Barbara on their wedding day. Barbara's wedding dress on display as part of the bridal exibit at the Sea Isle Historical Museum. Barbara and Bobby in the 1970s.
Boyle recalls that when they were in seventh grade, a young man in town died of a drug overdose. So three women formed the Association of Young Adults club to offer local youth gatherings like dances and more to keep them occupied. His pal was immediately on board to support this effort, Boyle muses: “Barbara was vice president of the association.”
During her teen years, Barbara Fourqurean “had a crush on ‘the blond and long-haired lifeguard,’ as she would say,” notes Abby Powell, now curator of the Sea Isle City Historical Museum. “Bob [McKeefery] was a summer lifeguard and Barb was a townie.”
Barbara Fourqurean and Robert McKeefery married on Oct. 8, 1977.
“There’s no greater girl … my best girl,” Robert McKeefery says of his wife, before noting how bravely Barbara battled cancer for seven years. Theirs was a marriage of 46 years. “I miss her every day. What’s that the kids say? ‘I can’t seem to wrap my head around it that she’s gone.’ We were together since age 15.”
“Mom’s illness came as a surprise,” says daughter Devon McKeefery, who works as a nurse in the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania’s general surgery operating rooms. “Mom gave us the best life here in Sea Isle,” she adds wistfully. “I told her that.”
In keeping with their mother’s teaching schedule, Devon and her sister Molly Ann McKeefery, a certified teacher of studio art, ceramics, and international crafts at Absegami High School, were born in the summertime.
“We went to the beach every day,” Devon McKeefery reminisces. “And, all of our grandparents were in Sea Isle, on 85th Street and 46th Street.”
Their mother loved hosting people at their home for all sorts of occasions, complete with her special plates and her napkins, Devon McKeefery recalls. Mrs. McKeefery threw “End of the School Year” parties for her co-workers and for students, parties for her husband Bob McKeefery’s co-workers when he was the assistant public works and assistant water and sewer utilities superintendent, birthday parties, July 4th parties, and more.
Mrs. McKeefery hosted family gatherings at Christmastime, too. “Dad had seven sisters and Mom had only one brother, Dale. She embraced the big family,” her daughter notes.
Indeed, Mrs. McKeefery lived fully in the present while maintaining a healthy reverence for the past.
“Mom was really into vintage Christmas decor,” Devon McKeefery says.
Mrs. McKeefery had collections of vintage Santa Clauses and vintage Valentines dating back to the early 1900s. Later in life, Mrs. McKeefery extended her creative streak by crafting art pieces intricately decorated with old pieces of jewelry in shapes like Christmas trees, valentines, and peacocks. Family members and friends regularly received her lovely artworks as gifts.
Left to right: Barbara’s beloved grandchildren on the first day of school. Barbara visiting her daughter Devon in the Florida Keys.
As for their mother’s role in teaching, “Over our whole lives, everywhere my sister Molly and I went, we ran into Mom’s students. They all said, ‘Your mom was my favorite teacher,’” says Devon McKeefery. “It even happened in the Bahamas!”
Their mother taught language arts and social studies. Mrs. McKeefery always included Cape May County history and the Lenni Lenape tribe’s history in her lessons. The tribe hunted on the island in the early 1600s.
Fittingly, Mrs. McKeefery spent considerable time after her laudable teaching career at the Sea Isle City Historical Museum, first as its vice president and then as museum curator.
As curator of the museum, Mrs. McKeefery determined what donations of historic items would be suitable for display in the museum and diligently kept track of all items chosen for display, items that must be related to Sea Isle City. She also worked closely with donors in creating the museum’s collection of Family Albums and Subject Albums, subjects such as storms.
Mrs. McKeefery’s fingerprints are all over exhibits that she helped to create, along with the explanatory signs naming donors at the Sea Isle City Historical Museum. The curator also donated many of her personal family items such as her exquisite wedding gown featured in the bridal exhibit and her mother’s smart U.S. Navy WAVES uniform in the military exhibit.
Museum president Joyce Molter and its new curator Abby Powell cannot say enough about their former co-worker’s dedication to the museum and her courage.
“Barb was seriously ill and kept on going,” says Molter. “We didn’t realize how sick she was,” even up until her last days working at the Sea Isle City Historical Museum.
“Barbara was always on top of it,” Powell says. “She never complained” about her illness. Even during her major health challenges, Mrs. McKeefery visited former museum volunteers who were no longer able to assist there and arranged outings and lunches with them.
The Sea Isle City Historical Museum will soon feature a display in Mrs. McKeefery’s memory and sponsor a memorial bench in her name, Powell and Molter note enthusiastically.
Left to right: Bob, Barb, Molly, and Devon. Robert and Barbara on the 46th Street beach.
In another grassroots effort to preserve local history, Mrs. McKeefery joined her friend Mike Boyle and others in the “Save Our Historic St. Joseph’s Church” movement. The group rescued Sea Isle’s original Catholic church, circa 1884, from the wrecking ball, renovated it and preserved it. “After we refurbished the church, Barbara also volunteered as a greeter,” Boyle says. “Barb wasn’t even a Catholic. She was a Methodist,” he adds in admiration.
Boyle further notes how Mrs. McKeefery supported other friends and acquaintances battling deadly diseases, even as she was in the midst of her own bout with cancer.
When Tom “Bird” Cardwell, their mutual friend and classmate from fifth grade, was approaching his dying days, “Barb insisted on visiting Tom” despite Boyle’s protestations, he says. And, she baked cookies for Tom and brought them to him as a gift, Boyle adds. Plus, Mrs. McKeefery often joined the late Kathy Boyle O’Neill for mutual support walks as his sister fought the good fight against ovarian cancer, Boyle recollects.
“Barb never talked about her cancer. She just talked about how her family would cope,” Boyle says. “That’s Barbara. She had character. She had truckloads of character!”
