Barbara Bayley Drew passed away peacefully at Martin Memorial Hospital South in Stuart, Florida, at 8:30 p.m. on Super Bowl Sunday, February 7, 2021. She was comforted by the presence of her husband, John, and their three children, Chris, Dave and Katy. Barbara was born on January 4, 1943, at the Brooklyn Naval Hospital in New York, the second child of Dorothy Smith Bayley and George Townsend Bayley. Barbara’s father was serving as an officer in the Navy when Barbara was born. Barbara has a brother, Robert “Bob” Townsend Bayley, who was four years older than Barbara. Barbara’s mother, Dorothy, was the second of four children of Evelyn and Francis Marion Smith (F.M. Smith was also known as “Borax” Smith, of Twenty Mule Team fame), of Oakland, California, and Shelter Island, New York.
Barbara grew up in Garden City, New York, initially at 170 Kilburn Road. In 1958 the family moved to 261 Stewart Avenue. Summers were spent at the family’s home on Smith Cove at Shelter Island, New York, where she enjoyed crabbing, sailing in her lightning sailboat, water skiing and swimming. Barbara was a natural athlete and if women had been able to participate in team sports when she was growing up she would have been a star performer, following in her father’s footsteps. On December 31, 1957, five days before her fifteenth birthday, Barbara met her future husband, John Drew, at a New Year’s Eve party. Barbara graduated from Garden City High School with her Class of 1960. She then spent two years at Elmira College in Elmira, New York, and the next year at Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School in New York City.
Barbara and John were married at the Garden City Congregational Church on June 15, 1963. Their reception was held at her home at 261 Stewart Avenue. They then proceeded to honeymoon at the Dorado Beach Hotel on Puerto Rico. Following the honeymoon, they drove to Nashville, Tennessee, where they spent three years when John was attending Vanderbilt University Law School. Barbara was active in Law Wives at Vanderbilt and worked as a secretary at the Methodist Publishing House in Nashville.
Following John’s graduation from Vanderbilt Law School in 1966 the young couple spent a year in a rented apartment on 16th Street in New York City while John attended NYU’s Graduate Tax Program. Barbara worked as the secretary for Eleanor Graves who was the food editor for Life Magazine. The highlight of the year was the birth of their first child, son Christopher Smith Drew, on May 19, 1967.
The following month the young couple moved from New York City and purchased their first home on Winding Lane in Avon, Connecticut. Son, David Everett Drew, joined the family on October 27, 1968. Barbara and John joined the Golf Club off Avon, located just a half a mile from their home, on June 1, 1969 and maintain their membership there to this day. Barbara frequented the swimming pool at the Club that summer and met many young mothers who became lifetime friends. Several of their children became lifetime friends with Chris and Dave.
In the summer of 1973 with child number three due in October, the family moved around the corner to 77 Stony Corners that they purchased from Florence and Chris Carriuolo. Daughter, Katherine “Katy” Lee Drew, arrived on October 11th.
When Barbara had children, she stopped working outside of the house and devoted herself to raising her children. She was the consummate housewife greeting her kids off the bus, helping them with their homework, attending hundreds of sporting events and making sure they had a family meal together at the end of the day. Barbara also loved having a house full of children and her home was a frequent gathering place for the neighborhood kids. Reflecting back upon those days, Barbara’s children are so appreciative of the sacrifices that she made for them and the daily love and support that she provided to them.
When the Club opened tennis courts in 1974 Barbara began playing tennis. In Barbara’s words, “John taught me to play tennis and it was so much fun. I immediately did well at it and was quite successful. John and I won many Husband / Wife Championships and Dorothy Kosakowski MacKenzie and I won many Ladies’ Doubles Championships.” In 1978 paddle tennis courts were built at the Club. Once again Barbara and John won multiple Husband / Wife championships and Barbara and Dorothy won many Ladies Doubles Championships.
Also in 1978, daughter Katy went to kindergarten and Barbara decided to take up golf. Once again Barbara combined her natural athletic abilities with many hours of practice and a fierce drive to succeed to become an outstanding golfer. Fellow golfers commented that Barbara had a beautiful swing. Once again, in Barbara’s words, “I was always competitive and won the Ladies Club Championships at Avon in 1990 and 1995, and five ladies’ Championships at Piper’s Landing. Before a competition I spent a lot of time focusing on what I had to do and somehow it usually worked out that way. In 2006 I had an 82, 75,74 at Piper’s Landing during the Ladies’ Championship, which far exceeded my highest goals. I think it was God’s way of saying let’s succeed one more time and let’s do it up really big this time.” Barbara had three holes in one. Two of her holes in one were in competition at the Golf Club of Avon and the third one was during a team match at the Hartford Golf Club. Barbara was the only woman to win club championships in tennis, paddle tennis and golf at the Golf Club of Avon. While Barbara enjoyed competing in the game of golf, she also loved the social side of the game and developed so many strong friendships over the years with her golf friends.
Education was very important to Barbara and she was very proud of her children’s accomplishments in this arena. Chris was a four-year student at Avon Old Farms School, an all-boys school, graduating in 1985. After a year at Epsom College in England as part of the English-Speaking Union exchange program, Chris attended Duke University, graduating in 1990. Chris later graduated from the University of Connecticut School of Law in 1995 to complete his education. Dave spent eighth and ninth grades at the Rectory School in Pomfret, Connecticut, before spending the next three years at Avon Old Farms. He graduated from Avon Old Farms in 1987. Dave then followed his father, John, to Colgate University, graduating in 1991 before graduating from St. John’s Law School, in New York, in 1998. Katy, graduated from the Westminster School in Simsbury in 1992 and then from Gettysburg College in 1996. Katy went on to obtain her Masters in Linguistics at the University of Delaware in 2000.
Also in 1996, Barbara and John purchased a small home at Piper’s Landing Yacht and Country Club in Palm City, Florida. Piper’s Landing is a community with 300 homes, an eighteen-hole golf course and a clubhouse. Barbara would spend most of the time from mid-October to mid-May at Piper’s Landing while John commuted back and forth to his estate planning law practice in Avon until he retired. Barbara threw herself into the community at Piper’s Landing and developed many strong friendships over the years.
In addition to playing golf Barbara devoted a substantial amount of time to the organization of golf events. She was a member of the Connecticut Woman’s Golf Association (CWGA) for many years. The CWGA consisted of women golfers who were members of a golf club in Connecticut and initially had a handicap of fifteen or less. For ten years or more Barbara was co chairman of its Tournament Committee that was responsible for the tournaments held at various clubs. One year Barbara was both responsible for running the Connecticut Senior Championship and she played in it, at the New Haven Country Club. When she came home at almost 8:00 p.m., John asked her why she was so late. She told John that after eighteen holes she had tied another lady for the lead and they had to have a playoff. She had lost the playoff on the fourth extra hole.
As she was raising her children and participating in a variety of athletic events, Barbara developed an exquisite sense of style, that she displayed in her personal appearance and in decorating her homes in Avon and Palm City. Barbara was also a voracious reader of novels and was a member of multiple book clubs. Whatever activity Barbara undertook her intention was to do it to the best of her ability. With some of the additional time that she had as the children grew up, Barbara followed her mother’s interest with needlepointing. Chris, Dave and John continue to enjoy wearing Barbara’s personalized needlepoint belts.
Unfortunately, in 2007 Barbara was faced with her first substantial medical issue. She was diagnosed with lung cancer, the same disease that had claimed her father’s life. Fortunately, she received wonderful care from Doctor Thomas Lynch, then in charge of the Lung Cancer Department at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She had a successful surgery to remove a portion of her right lung. Frequent visits were made to MGH to monitor her lungs and there were two subsequent surgeries. Barbara was determined that cancer was not going to take her life!
Barbara’s favorite golf event was the Annual Ladies Member-Guest Invitational Golf Tournament that was held the first week in May at the exclusive Lyford Cay Club at Nassau in the Bahamas. Barbara and at least eight of her golfing friends were invited to play in the first Annual Tournament in 2008. Twenty-two teams were invited from around the world for five days of golf and frolicking. Barbara partnered with Jane Witherwax of Shuttle Meadow when she participated in that Tournament for four years. It became her favorite week of the year. Barbara was responsible for providing invitations to that event to a number of her friends who were universally appreciative of that opportunity.
In 2009 Barbara organized and was the first Chairwoman of the Piper’s Landing Gifts and Memorials Program. Its mission was to “enhance the community, including our Golf Couse, community landscape and clubhouse.” Barbara also originated a Threes for Trees scramble golf event to raise money for the Program. Over the years more than a quarter of a million dollars has been generated from events and gifts. That money has had a substantial impact on the beautification of the golf course. As was Barbara’s personality, she did not want any signs on the golf course to recognize donations. However, she provided for a large book that records the contributions.
Barbara loved to travel. For a period of thirteen years starting in 1999 Barbara and John were very fortunate to be able to travel to various places in the world, sometimes to play golf and other times to just tour. They were able to take three Oceania cruises, to the Greek Isles, the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, including Egypt and Israel. They also went on several golf river cruises. On one of those golf cruises Barbara met Peggy Kirk Bell, a retired professional golfer who hosted “golfaris” at her Pine Needles resort in Pinehurst. After that meeting Barbara attended a week long golfari when she had a thirteen handicap. When she returned to Avon, she brought home the lessons learned at the golfari and reduced her handicap to seven. Several Tauck Tours were taken with the final two being a trip to Australia and New Zealand and, in January of 2012, a trip to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.
In October of 2012 Barbara suffered a devastating stroke that included a substantial brain bleed. She survived a three-hour operation and was able to have a reasonably normal life for more than eight years. However, her golf game did not return to its prior level and there was only one more world trip. That was a Danube River Cruise from Budapest to Prague to permit Barbara and John to see their bucket list city of Vienna. While the stroke compromised her ability to communicate her thoughts, she still had her beautiful smile and laugh and loved to be around her family and friends. As John likes to say, she never took a bad picture, only good and great ones.
About twenty years ago when needlepoint became challenging because of a slight decline of her vision, Barbara began the activity of stamping greeting cards. In 2002 Barbara and John decided to sell Stony Corners to move to a condo at Hunters Run in Avon. There Barbara converted a loft to her stamping room. She spent many hours working on her cards that celebrated birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and other holidays. As one would expect with Barbara, she was very talented with her stamping and devoted many hours to creating personalized cards for her family and friends. It turns out that many of the cards that were sent by Barbara to her friends were retained by them. Every year Piper’s Landing has an exhibit of art created by Piper’s members. In 2016, unbeknownst to Barbara, many of her Piper’s friends decided to prepare an exhibit of her stamping cards. It was remarkable how many of her friends had saved Barbara’s cards. It turned out to be a very impressive exhibit.
In 1982 Barbara’s father, George, died of lung cancer. Barbara’s mother, Dorothy was asked by her longtime family friend, Jasper Kane, to marry him, and she did. In 1996 Dorothy and Jasper moved to the assisted living facility of Harbour’s Edge in Delray Beach, Florida. Dorothy then decided that the family home on Shelter Island should be sold. Ten years later Barbara wanted to visit Shelter Island for the purpose of finding an appropriate home to rent for a week during the summer. With a stroke of good fortune, she found a home to rent on West Neck Creek. The home was on a sandy beach with quiet water that was perfect for our then six grandchildren aged from nine to three months. Barbara’s brother, Bob, his wife, Shirley, son, Ryan, daughter-in-law, Alicia, and, several years later, their daughter, Gwendoline, have joined in that event. The Drew and Bayley families have been extraordinarily fortunate to have been able to rent that home from the Tranfield family for the past twelve years for the week starting with the last Friday in July. Shelter Island was the perfect setting for family reunions. Carrying on Barbara’s wishes, the Drew and Bayley families are planning to have another family vacation on Shelter Island this summer and intend to have a special ceremony to celebrate Barbara’s wonderful life and spread her ashes in the waters of Smith Cove.
Barbara lived a life that mattered and she will be long remembered by her family and friends for her beauty, her thoughtfulness, her grace, her sense of humor, her competitive spirit and the way that she put all that she had into everything she did.
Barbara is survived by her husband, John; son, Chris, his wife Katie Martin, and sons, Carson and Brian, and their host son, Kenny, of Simsbury, Connecticut; son, Dave, his wife Evelyn, and their children, William, Ellie and Zachary, of Wilton, Connecticut; and daughter, Katy, and her twins, Teddy and Fynn, of Avon, Connecticut. Also surviving are Barbara’s brother, Bob Bayley, and his wife, Shirley; her nephew, Ryan Bayley, his wife, Alicia, and their daughter, Gwendoline; and countless cherished friends.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, there are no plans for a in person memorial service. However, we are considering the possibility of having a virtual service in April.
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