Barbara Barnes Hauptfuhrer '49
Barbara Barnes Hauptfuhrer '49
  • Sport:
    Woman of Inspiration
  • Inducted:
    2014

Bio

Posthumously Inducted 

As a participant in both basketball and crew and an accomplished golfer, Barbara was one of the early pioneers in sport at Wellesley. She established herself as a leader on campus, serving as class president in both her First and Senior year. Barbara’s leadership continued beyond graduation as she was one of the country’s earliest directors of major corporations, among them the Vanguard Group, the Raytheon Company, Owens-Illinois, Inc., the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, Knight-Ridder, and the Massachusetts Mutual Financial Group. Hauptfuhrer served on many nonprofit boards, including Wellesley’s Board of Trustees and as a President of the Alumnae Association.

Barbara was one of the most generous supporters of athletics. Her endowed gifts annually fund all varsity student-athlete and team post-season competitions. The Hauptfuhrer Awards fund annually bestows the Barbara Barnes Hauptfuhrer Scholar-Athlete award to a Senior who exemplifies the meaning of a true Wellesley Scholar-Athlete. And, in 2009, due to Barbara’s continued generosity, a legacy fund established a new athletics tradition -- every senior athlete is presented with a “BBH” Scholar-Athlete Sash to wear during Commencement symbolizing their proud participation as a varsity athlete.

Hauptfuhrer and her husband, George, were married in 1950 and raised two sons. She died at age 80 in April 2009.


I know that Mom would be thrilled and proud to be a part of this inaugural class of the Wellesley Athletics Hall of Fame. Her love of Wellesley, of the people she met here, and of sports always fueled and inspired her life. I wish she were here to write her own reflections about her time at Wellesley, because her reflections were always so vivid and enthusiastic and alive with joy and wonder. Instead of doing a poor imitation of what she would say, I’m going to let her speak for herself, pulling reflections from her ruminations on Wellesley during her 80th birthday celebration, 6 months prior to her passing.

“I had always assumed I would go to Duke, because back then faculty children could go tuition free, so naturally I would go to Duke. But unbeknownst to me, my father always hoped I would go to Wellesley College. He found out that Wellesley required at least three years of Latin. They didn’t offer that in the Durham Public Schools, so my father arranged for me to attend Salem Academy.”

“So I went to Salem for a year and a half. One day, Ms. Weaver, the head- mistress, said ‘Barbara, we should talk about where you want to go to college.’ I said, ‘Ms. Weaver you know I can go to Duke tuition free, so that’s where I plan to go.’ And she said ‘Well you know you can apply for a scholarship and there are some colleges I’d like to talk to you about.’ She thought she knew how to reach me, so she said, ‘Wellesley is the most southern-like and it’s near Boston and has lots of interesting things to do. I think you should apply for a scholarship there.’ And I did. And I got the scholarship and Wellesley opened my life.”

In the back of Mom’s 1945 diary, she recorded sayings and poems she particularly liked. The final entry in that diary was this from Mildred McAfee Horton, President of Wellesley, in her letter to Alumnae, October 1945:

“Wellesley’s ‘ivory tower’ has clear windows and outward swinging doors. From its windows students see a wide and profoundly interesting world. Through its doors they emerge to serve that world with faithful honesty and honest faith.”

Looking back on my mother’s remarkable life, I see how deeply she took these words to heart, finding intense joy in the “wide and profoundly interesting world,” and both serving that world and receiving what that world had to offer “with faithful honesty and honest faith.”

For the remarkable road that Wellesley helped set her on, I say for Mom and for all of us: “Thank you Wellesley.”

–Reflection by the Hauptfuhrer Family