Barbara Louise Gazaway Harris, known to her friends and family as “Boby”, completed her earthly journey Saturday, December 10th, after a lengthy illness.
Boby was born in Ruidoso, New Mexico, the first child of JB and Julia Ann Gazaway, on August 7, 1936. As a junior in high school, she met a tall, handsome airman, Ken Harris, at the roller rink. That night she went home and told her mother she had met the man she was going to marry. They did marry on July 13, 1953! They were very happily married 67 years. Ken & Boby had four children: Terry Kimm, Kathy Jan, Gregory Stewart, and Jeffrey Scott.
Boby graduated valedictorian from Ruidoso High School in Ruidoso, NM in 1954. She later earned two Associate degrees, one in Music and one in Accounting, from St. Clair Co. Community College in Port Huron, MI. She put those to use serving as Pastors’ secretaries, church financial secretary, church pianist, including directing the choir from the piano in one church, and teaching piano lessons. She also taught children and adults in Sunday School.
Boby loved gardening, tailoring her plants to the climate she lived in at the time. In Michigan she grew beautiful roses and gallons of strawberries. Here in Brownwood she grew blue bonnets and poppies. She often said, “Like Paul, I have learned to be content in whatever state I am.” Additionally, she enjoyed sewing and needlework. Her needlework gifts are treasured items of family and friends. In college Boby took a bowling class. Following that she taught Jeff to bowl and they all joined a league. In Brownwood she also recruited her brother Jerry and they all bowled together in leagues and just for fun with family and friends. Boby dedicated her life to her faith, her husband, and her family. She was known and loved by so many friends, of all ages, across the country, making life long friends wherever Ken’s job, as a Border Patrolman, took them. In retirement, she and Ken moved to Brownwood where they were active in Coggin Avenue Baptist Church, as well as civic affairs.
She was preceded in death by her husband Ken, son, Greg, her parents and her brother, Jerry B. Gazaway. She is survived by her brother, Tom Gazaway, of Lemon Grove, California, three children: Terry Goodman and her husband Don of Denton, Texas; Kathy McClure and her husband Miller of Farmersville, Texas; and Jeff Harris and his wife Judy of Patterson, Louisiana. She is also survived by nine grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren, in whom she took great delight and a host of nieces and nephews.
She will be greatly missed.
Funeral service for Boby will be Saturday, Dec. 17, 2022 at 10:00 am, at Davis Morris Funeral Home in Brownwood, TX, followed by interment in Eastlawn Cemetery in Early, TX.
