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Barbara Robbins

Barbara Robbins loved to cozy up on her couch at home and to indulge her two grandchildren. She was crazy about Facebook, adult coloring books, and her favorite TV shows, including reality shows featuring brides, cooks, and Alaska frontier families.

She was fond of listening to the Great American Songbook recordings of Frank Sinatra. She adored Judy Garland throughout her life.

Growing up in the '50s and '60s, she never really liked The Beatles, The Beach Boys or Elvis, though she did cotton to Dion, Little Anthony and the Imperials, and The Four Seasons.

She was a great cook; she didn't bake; and she visited Ireland once and the United Kingdom on another occasion.

Barbara, who lived in the Hopwood area, died early Saturday morning, Feb. 18, at LaFayette Manor following nine days of treatment at Uniontown Hospital. The cause was cancer. She underwent a double mastectomy for breast cancer in 2007.

The cancer recently returned and spread rapidly. She was 68 years old.

Barbara was born Nov. 29, 1948, in Uniontown. Her father Robert Reynolds was custodian at the old Ella Peach Elementary School on Church Street in Uniontown. A veteran of World War II, he died in 1962 while on a camping trip to Yough Lake in Somerset County with his family.

His early death, at the age of 40, had a profound impact on Barbara.

Her mother is Mary Ellen Reynolds Bajgier of Uniontown, who survives her. Mary was the longtime restaurant manager at the G.C. Murphy store in Uniontown. Barbara worked at Murphy's in the late 1960s.

Besides her father, she was preceded in death by both sets of grandparents: Paul and Gladys Mager and O'Neal and Myra Reynolds.

She was married to Richard Robbins for the past 47 years. They wed in Winchester, Va., on December 22, 1970. Their daughter Mindy, who works for the Allegheny County Intermediate Unit teaching the deaf and is married to Nikki Robbins-Venables, was born in April 1978 in Uniontown. Grandchildren Quinton and Bailey came along in September 2007.

For several years in the early 1970s, Barbara and her husband lived in New Castle, Pa., while the latter worked for the New Castle News. They returned to the Uniontown area in 1977. Richard was a longtime reporter for the Greensburg Tribune-Review. He now writes an occasional column for the Herald Standard.

Brave in the face of adversity, Barbara was in the midst of chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer when her daughter gave birth to Quinton and Bailey in New Haven, Conn. Rather than stay home, she endured the long car ride from Uniontown to New Haven to be with Mindy and the new babies.

Barbara gathered to herself a lot of good friends. She was close to her only sibling, her sister Robbie Reynolds Bryan as well as Robbie's husband Allan of Uniontown.

Friends and family will be received at the Shell Funeral Home, 164 South Mt. Vernon Avenue, in Uniontown, Tuesday, February 21st, from 5 to 8 p.m. Services will be held at the funeral home Wednesday, February 22nd, at 11 a.m. Lay Servant Joyce Brant of the Community United Methodist Church of Evans Manor will officiate.

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