Barbara Carriere

Barbara Flora (Thompson) Carriere passed away in her sleep August 3, 2017 after a short bout with old age.  She was 96 and would have been 97 on September 12, 2017.  Barbara was preceded in death by her husband Ernest P. Carriere in 1987 and her first-born child, daughter Sharon Hinze in 2011. 

Barbara was born into a Quaker family in Wichita, Kansas, in 1920.  In her last year of high school, her family moved to Albany, Georgia, where she finished high school and after graduation attended Georgia Southwestern University in Americas, Georgia, where she graduated with a two-year teaching degree in elementary education. 

These were the War Years, and she met Ernest one day walking down a street in Albany.  The family story is that he intentionally drove into a puddle and splashed water on her so that he could get out, apologize, and introduce himself.  They eloped a short time later, and Sharon was born in 1942 in Dothan, Alabama, where Ernest had been stationed as a member of the Army Air Corps.  In 1944, a son, Peter Michael) was born in a military hospital on an air base near Moultrie, Georgia.

Barbara and Ernest led a varied and exciting life, she as an officer’s wife, and he as an officer in the USAF.  The family lived in Anchorage, Alaska (where her last child, a son Phillip was born); Van Buren, Maine; Casablanca, Morocco; Naples, Italy; Washington, D.C.; Omaha, Nebraska; and Eau Claire.  Barbara began teaching school again in Washington, D.C., and she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in library science from the University of Omaha in 1968 at which time she moved with Philip and Ernest, who had been hired as an assistant professor of education at UWEC, to Eau Claire, Wisconsin. 

Barbara will be sorely missed by her children Peter (Linda) Carriere, Phillip (Nikki) Carriere, her grandchildren Sean (Lisa) Carriere, Chiharu Carriere, Drew Stotesbery (Sharina), Chris Stotesbery (Shannon), Paul (Angie) Carriere, Christopher Britten (Christine) Carriere, and the many great grandchildren in the family.  Perhaps the one who will miss her the most is her cat Littlee, from whom she had been inseparable for the last 15 years.

Private graveside services will be held for both Barbara and her husband Ernest Carriere on Saturday, August 19, 2017 at Rest Haven Cemetery in Eau Claire, WI.