Barbara Jane (Forbes) Stover

   Barbara Jane (Forbes) Stover passed away peacefully on Thursday, April 2, 2020 at the Hawthorne Inn of Danville, Illinois. A visitation will be on Friday, September 4, 2020 at First Presbyterian Church, 100 N. Franklin St. in Danville from 9:30-10:30am. We will be observing mandatory masks and social distancing per IDPH guidelines. A private service for family and close friends, along with burial will follow later in the day.

Barbara was born on June 4, 1923 in Laurens, Iowa, near her family’s hometown of Pocahontas. She graduated from Drake University in Des Moines, IA (Class of 1944) and received her master’s degree from Michigan State University following a stint in the US Army Air Corps at the end of World War II. She taught Speech and Writing at Danville Junior College (later Danville Area Community College) from 1966 to 1985. She was preceded in death by her husband Donald and her sister Sibyl Hoffman, and is survived by her sons Thomas (Donna), Daniel (Valerie), and Matthew, her daughter Martha Vargas, and her niece Deborah Fowler (John), as well as by seven grandchildren, fifteen great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren.

Her lifelong love of the theater led her to several leading roles with Danville’s Red Mask Players, as well as being half (with her close friend Ilva Walker) of the literary performance duo The Stool Pigeons. After her retirement from teaching, she particularly enjoyed volunteering at the Danville Public Library, and quilt-making as a member of the Land of Lincoln Quilters. She volunteered with Faith in Action of Vermilion County and the Lamon House, was a hospice volunteer, and was an avid bridge player. She was a member of Delta Kappa Gamma and the A.A.U.W. Above all else, she treasured her family and friends.

In accordance with her wishes, she will be cremated, and interred beside her husband Donald at the National Cemetery in Danville, Illinois. Her family requests, in lieu of flowers, that memorial donations be made to the Stover Family Scholarship Fund through the DACC Foundation, to the Danville Public Library, or to the Vermilion County Museum.

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