Barbara Ann Waddell (neé Gowitzke) was born January 25, 1933 in Manchester, New Hampshire. Barbara was the only child of Fred and Mabel Gowitzke and from a young age demonstrated both high intelligence and athletic ability. After graduating as valedictorian from Boston University she was a gymnastics coach at UT Austin from 1952-54. She continued in higher edu-cation and research in biomechanics and earned her PhD at Uni-versity of Wisconsin. In 1972 Barbara became an assistant pro-fessor at McMaster University in Canada to head up a new re-search lab in biomechanics. Utilizing high speed super 8 cameras at 400-600 frames per second, she pioneered discoveries in limb movement in tennis. She authored a major textbook: "Scientific Bases of Human Movement" (1988, in three editions). She mar-ried the entomologist, David Waddell in 1976: a very happy mar-riage of thirty two years. In addition to her university duties, Barbara was an active citizen of Hamilton, Ontario, leading a number of causes, most notably a successful referendum to ban smoking in public buildings. She and David were members and officers in the local horticultural society. After taking early re-tirement, she and David took up naturalist touring, journeying some fifty times into remote places to encounter unique flora, fauna, and terrain including two expeditions to the Galápagos Islands.

After David's death in 2008, Barbara became active in church life and reached out to Kurt and Dolores Richardson for friendship. Through them, Barbara would become a virtual family member. As a widow with no siblings or children, she requested and Kurt accepted to be adopted by her, having lost his mom many years earlier. Moving to Texas together in 2015, Barbara lived under Kurt and Dolores's care for 7 1/2 years. They joined Highland Park Presbyterian Church where they were adopted as mission-aries. Barbara loved the Curry Sunday School class and became best friends with Frances Hawkins and enjoyed much fellowship with its members. Before Covid, Barbara drove to church twice a week and to Summit senior gym three days per week. In the past two years Barbara required assisted living and suffered from Alz-heimer's. In recent days her decline had been rapid. Barbara de-parted peacefully on September 21, 2023.

Memorial services in Wynne chapel, graveside in Hamilton, ON and in Manchester, NH.

Thank you for your prayers, Kurt & Dolores Richardson