Barbara Lange Gammie

1932 - 2018

Barbara Lange was born on October 15, 1932 in Flushing, NY to Frederick G. Lange and Pauline Oldham Harrison Lange. Barbara also had a twin sister, Irene, who was also born that day but tragically died at four months old for unknown reasons. It was said it was an early case of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Barbara suffered a birth accident categorized as Cerebral Palsy that affected her hearing, speech and, to a small degree, her coordination.

Barbara was the youngest daughter having four older sisters, Nancy, Veronica (Vera), Mary and Martha. In 1935 a younger brother, Frederick, was born completing the Lange family. In 1938, the family moved to Munsey Park in Manhasset, NY, on the North Shore of Long Island. She attended public school and graduated from Manhasset High School in 1950.

Barbara had a loving childhood spending her summers in the beach house purchased by her mother in 1945 in Bayville, NY. Bayville is a beach community on the North Shore of Long Island about 15 miles east of Manhasset. The house was in the middle of a crescent-shaped beach with three bedrooms and a front porch that faced the Long Island Sound. Barbara was so fond of Bayville that she would often start any conversation with new people she met by saying “Are you from Bayville?”

She met and married James A. Gammie on January 15, 1955. Since Jim lived in a nearby neighborhood, Plandome Heights, it is believed that they met at a church event. Jim had cerebral palsy with the same deficits to his hearing and speech. On July 22, 1955 they had their first son, James Alexander Gammie III, followed by Bruce Frederick Gammie on September 1, 1958 and their daughter, Irene Mary Gammie, on August 15, 1960. They first lived in the Manorhaven neighborhood of Port Washington and then the family moved to her beloved Bayville in 1964.

Barbara and Jim divorced in 1968 with Barbara remaining in their Bayville home with her three children and Jim moving to Tulsa, OK. She remarried in 1971 and relocated to Upstate New York in 1972. This second marriage proved to be disastrous so, in 1975, she moved back to live with her father in the Bayville beach house until his death in 1985.

In 1992, Barbara was the lucky lottery winner being chosen as one of the new residents of the Landmark Senior Housing project in Port Washington that converted an old school to low-income apartments. She lived there for almost 15 years being just a short walk from her sister Vera’s home. During these years, she would walk to her sister’s before dinner to share a cocktail on the lawn with Vera and her husband, Dick. Some years later, after Dick passed away, her sister Martha would live with Vera and the three ladies would enjoy each other’s company over their favorite Manhattans and a simple meal.

Despite Barbara’s handicap (as she called it), she lived a full life with three children and seven grandchildren. She loved to travel and to take long walks. She would visit her son Bruce, and his wife Jackie with their two children in Atlanta, GA. Her daughter, Irene, lived on Long Island so she would see her and her four children frequently. Her son, Jim – also fond of Bayville – would often visit from his home in Northern Virginia.

When Barbara broke her hip two months after her 75th birthday, she would endure 10 more years of surgeries, physical therapy and then a slow decline, including dementia, until her death on March 8, 2018. She spent most of these years in a nursing home when her medical care became unmanageable in her studio apartment. Some of her ashes were scattered in front of the summer house in Bayville by her children in March 2018 after a service held at St. Gertrude’s Church. The urn containing the rest of her ashes was interred at the Sims Family Cemetery in Au Gres, MI, on July 27, 2018 next to her first husband Jim Gammie and her daughter-in-law Jackie Gammie who passed away a few months before.