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Barbara Thorne-Thomsen

July 16, 1935 — February 5, 2019

Barbara Thorne-Thomsen

Barbara Thorne-Thomsen passed away peacefully at The Health Center at Live Oak in Shreveport on February 5, 2019. She grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota and attended public schools there, graduating from Central High. Barbara had very warm memories of her childhood and young adulthood in St. Paul, but later in life she often said that nothing would convince her to leave Shreveport, a city she loved dearly. During her life in Shreveport, Barbara was a very busy person. In addition to her role as mother to 4 very active children, Barbara was a speech pathologist, a junior high school teacher at Southfield School, a family and individual therapist, a member of the Louisiana Board of Regents for Higher Education and an elder at the First Presbyterian Church of Shreveport. After high school, Barbara attended Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, where she studied speech pathology and theater, and where she acted in many theater productions. She loved her life as an actress at Grinnell and, for one of her performances, she won what Barbara always described, with justifiable pride, as being the Grinnell equivalent to winning an Oscar! Also during her time at Grinnell College, Barbara met a dashing young soldier who was attending an Army special training program at Grinnell. After his return from World War II, Barbara married this soldier, Fletcher Thorne-Thomsen, and they remained married for 71 years until his death last year. During her summer vacations away from Grinnell, Barbara waited tables at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colorado and, as a waitress at the Broadmoor, she met many famous people, including Clark Gable, who was undoubtedly her favorite. After their wedding in St. Paul, Fletcher and Barbara lived in eight different places including Texas, Minnesota, Indiana, Utah, Kansas, Illinois, Argentina and, of course, Louisiana. Fletcher and Barbara lived in Argentina with their first two children during the era of Eva (Evita) Perón, and Barbara had many interesting stories to tell of that experience. Barbara later returned to college and earned her Master's Degree in Social Work from Louisiana State University in Shreveport. She became a family and individual therapist with Dr. Paul Ware and later, with Peggy Salley, she started Interactional Services, which became a prominent Shreveport area mental health clinic. Barbara loved her work as a counselor and never considered retiring until she turned 90. She also felt passionately about the value of education and was very honored to serve as a member of the Louisiana Board of Regents, and she enjoyed her work there enormously. Barbara celebrated her 90th birthday and her retirement on the same day in the summer of 2015. Barbara is survived by sons, Fletcher, Jr. and wife, Margaret, Tom, Mark and wife, Yliana and by her daughter, Ann Berry and husband, Mike Berry, as well as seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her parents, Clara and Thomas Carlyle Macoubrey, her sisters Marge Lind and Carol Rayson, and her husband, Fletcher. Barbara's family would like to thank the wonderful caretakers at the Oaks of Louisiana for the loving care they provided her, as well as the staff at Highland Christus Regional Hospice for their very special care. The family would like to thank individually all the people that gave Barbara such wonderful support in her final years but there are simply too many. Special thanks, however, must be given to Diane Dean for her extraordinary love and care. In lieu of flowers, please consider donations to St. Jude's Hospital (www.stjude.org) or Presbyterian Mo-Ranch Assembly (www.moranch.org) or a charity of your choice. The Memorial Service celebrating her life will be held at First Presbyterian Church, 900 Jordan Street in Shreveport at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, February 16, 2019. Officiating will be Rev. Dr. Chris Currie. There will be a reception to follow at the church.
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First Presbyterian Church

First Presbyterian Church

900 Jordan St, Shreveport, LA 71101

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