QUINSLER, Barbara

Arizona Republic (Phoenix AZ) Sunday, February 27, 2011 Barbara Faust Quinsler, 85, passed away early Thursday morning, February 24, 2011, in a Scottsdale long-term care home. Barbara was the widow of William T Quinsler, who died in the year 2000 after a lengthy illness in the family home they had bought more than 50 years ago in Phoenix's Arcadia district. Barbara was born February 14, 1926, in the hills of West Virginia where her father, Harry Faust, established a home in the town of Worth to open a new coal mine for his company. Barbara's parents, Harry and Mary, both born in Pennsylvania, had two other children, Molly, who died of meningitis before Barbara's birth, and Barbara's only brother, Harry Jr, who died in an accident just before he was to enter college. After her father's death in a mine accident, Barbara and her mother moved to Margate, NJ. A graduate of Northfork High School in West Virginia, Barbara attended Ward Belmont Junior College in Nashville, Tennessee, before graduating with a B.A. from Hollins College in Virginia. Afterwards she lived with friends at the Barbizon for Women in New York City while taking special courses in the Katherine Gibbs School. Barbara first met Bill Quinsler in Margate, when Bill was employed by a firm involved with electrical technology. They married in June 1957 in Atlantic City and moved to Phoenix where Bill owned a home near 40th Street and Indian School Road and had started his career at Arizona Public Service Company. They moved to their Arcadia Distict home on East Calle del Medio shortly after the birth of their first child, William T (Tom) Quinsler Jr. Two other children, Harry F Quinsler, and Catherine M (Kit) Quinsler followed. Home, children and friends were the focal point of Barbara's life. An avid reader, she chose books to explore the geographic wonders of the world and meet the interesting, intriguing characters in foreign lands. In that way, she was almost always near her children and friends. With an uncanny gift as a landscape designer and gardener, she chose to design extraordinary "backyards" for friends utilizing brick and cement, wood logs, and other products from the "trades" to develop grass sections, flower gardens, desert landscape sections, and not coincidentally recruit her children at varying stages of their early lives to lay the bricks, dig the grounds, plant the grass, haul the wood, and sometimes invite their friends to join in--all to keep the kids busy in useful pursuits. A love of Barbara's life was the frequent visits to their ranch, the Lazy YJ on the Blue River in Eastern Arizona not far from Springerville. There, from an early age the children learned to ride and care for their horses and cattle, fish and hunt, repair fences, farm, and preserve nature's gifts and wonders. All three children and their families now have homes on the ranch where Barbara's ashes will be scarttered across the land, as were her husband's. The surviving families are: William Thomson (Tom) Quinsler Jr, of Phoenix, and his wife, Jami Lynn Quinsler, and children, Robert William Quinsler, Christopher Michael Quinsler, Mary Elizabeth Quinsler, James Thomson Quinsler and Rebecca Lynn Quinsler; Harry Faust Quinsler, of Scottsdale, and his wife, Mary Ann Quinsler, and children, Gregory Faust Quinsler and Grant William Quinsler; and Catherine (Kit) Quinsler Orn, of Cary, North Carolina, and her husband, Mikael Gustaf Orn, and children, Anders Gustaf Orn and Kaila Barbara Orn. Private services were conducted Saturday, February 26, at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church. Donations to the Alzheimer's Association in lieu of flowers would be appreciated.