Barbara Bard

Dr. Barbara Bard, longtime Professor at Central Connecticut State University and resident of West Hartford, passed away after a long illness on Sunday, August 18, 2013 at Covenant Medical Center in Lubbock, TX. Born in Brooklyn, NY in 1934 the younger daughter of Jack and Rose Fink, Dr. Bard attended Tilden High School in East Flatbush, Brooklyn and then received her B.A. from Brooklyn College. Following her undergraduate studies, she received her Masters Degree from The University of Michigan and then a Ph.D. from New York University. She taught briefly in the Connecticut public school system before embarking on a distinguished academic career as a professor, in the Department of Special Education first at Central Connecticut State College and then Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Connecticut. She developed a national reputation as an educator of graduate students interested in teaching children with learning disabilities. As well as becoming an authority on how to help children who were speech delayed, she was proudly active in many areas of campus life, including the American Association of University Professors, where she held leadership roles for her fellow members. She was also active in The Connecticut Speech Language Hearing Association as well as the American Speech Hearing Association, serving in several leadership roles and being honored with numerous awards for her service. She was an enthusiastic traveler, having been posted to Pakistan and Argentina in the 1960s in connection with her husband’s work for the Agency for International Development. She continued her interest in international travel and public service by working extensively in speech and hearing clinics both domestically, including as the Supervisor of Speech Language Pathology at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, as well as consulting for the Karachi American School, The Junior English School in Rome, for Partners of the Americas in Brazil, and in the Bahamas as part of a Caribbean Initiative Grant. Upon her retirement from academe, she took a job as the first director of the Speech Language Pathology and Audiology Care Center at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. After establishing and running the clinic for four years, she worked as an educational consultant, becoming the External Coordinator for a federal grant that sought in improve literacy rates in the Hartford public schools. Her last position, appropriately enough, was doing what she most loved professionally, helping children with learning disabilities at the Grace Webb School at the Institute for Living at Hartford Hospital. She is survived by her daughter, Jennifer, a law school professor in Texas, her son Eli, an attorney in New York, her daughter-in-law Elizabeth; her granddaughter Madeline; her sister Elinor Klingher, and many more close friends and family members. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to B’Nai Tikvoh Shalom (www.btsonline.org) or the Connecticut Speech Language Hearing Association (www.ctspeechhearing.org). Services will be held at 1 p.m., on Wednesday, August 21, 2013 at Weinstein’s Mortuary. For further information, directions, or to sign the guest book for Barbara please visit: www.weinsteinmortuary.com/funerals.cfm.