If you are a person of faith— or just one of goodwill— may we respectfully ask that you offer up some kind thoughts about one of our longtime colleagues here at the Reporter. Barbara McDonough, 86, who worked at the Reporter from our earliest days in 1983 until her retirement in 2015, is in poor health.
Barbara, as longtime readers of the Reporter know, tracked the births and the deaths of our community for much of her career in newspapering. She kept a hard-copy desktop calendar with the birth dates of everyone she knew in her world, which centered around the parishes and hills of her adopted home, Dorchester.
It was Barbara— or ”Bubbles,” as she was known to many friends— who filed the weekly “Bubbles Birthdays and Special Occasions” column; she also compiled our death notices and tracked civic meetings for the “Neighborhood Notables” section. She and her husband Vincent “Vinnie” McDonough, were fixtures at civic events in Dorchester for a half-century, well before the Reporter’s first edition.
As we wrote the week that she retired: “What most people do not know is that Barbara has been instrumental in helping to run the Reporter in many ways over the last three decades. Barbara has been the cheerful face that greeted visitors to our old office on Neponset Avenue, and, for the last 15 years now, on Columbia Point.
“In the mornings, hers was the voice that greeted callers who phoned into the paper. Barbara was the person who called parish rectories and principals’ offices and police stations seeking details about Mass schedules and honor rolls and public safety meetings.”
Her weekly column, “The View from Pope’s Hill,” was unlike any column you were likely to find in an American newspaper, circa 2010. It was more akin to a diary, a recounting of the daily life of a woman, a mom, a wife, a neighbor who shared the momentous and the mundane with equal zest and inquisitiveness.
It would be folly to try and find a replacement for Barb. Truth be told, we never tried. In May 2020, we prevailed upon her to revise the “View” column for a Dorchester Day edition published in the throes of Covid-19. She shared the sad news of her “hubby’s” passing the year before, just days after they celebrated their 59th wedding anniversary. She showered praise on friends and neighbors who’d been looking after her, particularly her daughter Sue, who has been her rock for many years.
Sadly, Barb suffered a stroke this past summer and has since been living in a long-term care facility in Quincy. She has been in worsening condition in recent days and her family is now preparing to say their goodbyes.
For our part, we hope that she will know that her diligent efforts to chronicle this neighborhood through our pages over the years is not forgotten. In fact, we are frequently asked about her return.
Each of Barbara’s columns was accompanied with a stanza of poetry or a verse of song. It is most fitting, then to close with one Barb chose from her last Christmas column in December 2015:
Every gift which is given,
Even though it be small,
Is, in reality, great,
If it is given with affection.”
by Pendar
