Master storyteller Barbara Mead Anthony of Wellfleet and South Yarmouth died peacefully at her Thirwood Place home on Nov. 3, 2024 from complications of dementia. She was 87.
Barbara was born in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. to Ralph and Altina Mead. In an unpublished memoir, she wrote: “I began my life as a surprise. In 1937, before ultrasound, my parents had no idea that my mother was carrying twins. During labor my mother was anesthetized. She went to sleep expecting one baby and woke up to welcome two.”
Growing up, Barbara was exceptionally close to her twin brother, Philip, particularly because their father’s job with the New York Telephone Company required them to move to a new town every three years as telephone service expanded across upstate New York.
“Barbara was the smartest kid in the class,” said Phil. “She always had her nose in a book.” When the teacher asked questions, “she could answer every one,” he said. “The teacher asked her to give other kids a chance,” which made things hard “in those days especially, since she was a girl.”
Barbara went to Elmira College, where in 1957 she met Stephen Anthony, her brother’s classmate at Hamilton College. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1959, and she and Steve married in 1960, the same year she received her master’s in education from Wheelock College.
It was through Steve that Barbara came to know and love the Outer Cape. Steve grew up in Newton, but the happiest times of his life were spent at Hamblen Farm in Wellfleet, which had been in his family for generations and was a working farm when he was young. Although Barbara and Steve raised their family in Wellesley, they spent as much time as they could at the farm.
After becoming empty nesters, Barbara and Steve built their own Wellfleet home. When Steve retired, they became active in town and, because Barbara was an avowed non-cook, regulars at restaurants across the Outer Cape.
Barbara was passionate about stories, books, and the importance of early learning. “She saw kids as fully human and she gave them — especially very young children — her full attention,” said her daughter Susan. “She was curious about what they were thinking in a way many adults were not.” In 1960, the idea that even very young children deserved developmentally appropriate learning experiences and highly skilled teachers was still new. Her belief in the importance of that work made her a pioneer.
After teaching public kindergarten in Cambridge, Barbara taught early childhood education at Dean College and at Lasell University; she was also a member of the board of trustees at Wheelock. But it was her role as the “Story Lady,” going into preschools and early grade classrooms and telling stories to children using a flannel board, that was her greatest joy.
Barbara memorized stories, poems, and songs from children’s books and created cutout figures that she put on a flannel board to retell the stories in new and engaging ways. What began as a hobby became a career after the Boston Globe published a piece about her storytelling in 1978, and she began getting calls from schools and child-care centers all over greater Boston.
Through the ’80s and early ’90s she told stories in more than 30 classrooms every month. “I like the flannel board because the figures are bigger than those in the books, so more kids can see them,” she told the Globe, adding that telling rather than reading enables total eye contact. “The children feel there is some sort of magic in figures sticking to a board and doing a bit of something,” she said.
In retirement, Barbara told stories at the Wellfleet and Truro libraries and the Wellfleet Elementary School. “Whatever Barbara does is incredibly imaginative,” her colleague Joan Patten told the Globe. “It’s always amazing to watch her pulling together feathers and bits of nothing into a story.”
Over the years Barbara amassed more than 200 stories that she could tell from memory, each with cutout figures saved in its own box with the text. This collection will live at the Wellfleet library thanks to Youth Services Librarian Anna Nielsen.
After Steve’s death in 2010, Barbara moved to Thirwood Place in South Yarmouth, where her childhood experiences adjusting to new places served her well.
She became involved in her retirement community, serving on committees and even doing a monthly “story hour” for the residents because she believed that “stories are for everyone, not just children.”
Barbara is survived by her brother and sister-in-law Philip and Ann Mead of Shelburne, Vt. and by her daughters, collage artist Susan Anthony of Wellfleet and Emily Anthony and husband David Maymudes of Seattle, Wash. and Wellfleet. She was enormously proud of her two grandchildren, Sophia Maymudes, who constructs a monthly crossword for the Provincetown Independent, and Nat Maymudes, both of Seattle.
A memorial service is planned for spring 2025.
In lieu of flowers, donations in Barbara’s honor may be sent to the Friends of the Wellfleet Library, Box 857, Wellfleet 02667.
