Eleanor Jane (Barry) Bade 1927 - 2024

Eleanor Jane (Barry) Bade passed away peacefully in Oakland on January 8, 2024.

Elly, as she was universally known, was born in Glendale, CA, on February 22, 1927, to Rebecca Jane Barry and Gilbert Stephenson Barry. She grew up in Glendale and La Cañada, hiking in the San Gabriel mountains with her father on weekends and spending summer vacations camping near the then tiny town of Mammoth Lakes. 

Elly was a graduate of Pasadena High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in history at Pomona College. She subsequently earned a master’s degree in library science at USC while working for the Los Angeles public library system, establishing once and for all Elly’s lifelong interest in books and learning. After library school Elly moved to San Francisco and worked as the school librarian at Everett Junior High.

In 1952, Elly married William (Bill) Bade, a mathematician she had met on a blind date at the 1947 Pomona College Homecoming. They moved to New Haven, CT with Bill taking a position at Yale. There, they started what became a large family. In 1955, Elly and Bill moved back home to California when Bill joined the Mathematics Department faculty.

For 60 years, Elly and Bill enjoyed an active life together, with family vacations spent camping in the backcountry of the Sierra Nevada, three sabbaticals in Denmark with their children, and three more in England and Australia after their children left home. They loved to explore California for wildflowers and were delighted when finding Calochortus and Lewisia.

Elly was active in Camp Fire as her daughters grew up and remained close to her fellow Camp Fire mothers for decades. In the early 1970s, Elly returned to college and studied botany, landscape gardening, and horticulture, fostering her consuming interest in plants and gardening. Elly was an active member of the California Native Plant Society and the Rock Garden Society and served as a Propagator and Docent at the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden. Elly taught ‘Grocery Store Botany’ with her great friend Myrtle Wolff and others in elementary and middle-school science classes throughout the East Bay.

In 2010, Elly and Bill moved to Piedmont Gardens in Oakland, where they lived happily among many new friends, and especially after Bill’s death in 2012 Elly cultivated a new interest in poetry. Elly served on the advisory board of the Bade Museum of Biblical Archaeology in Berkeley.

Elly will be remembered for her warmth, keen intellect, her love and interest in the lives of all she knew and loved. Elly is survived by her six children: Michael (Rebekah), Sarah (Georg), Alan (Wendy), Anne (Michael), Edward (Laurie), and Margaret (Dan); seven grandchildren (Hanna, Dario, Katie, Iris, Lyle, Haley, and Jack); and her many dear friends all over the world.

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