Colleen Ann (Clifford) Barnett Eulogy

Delivered 31 July 2021 at Immaculate Conception Parish, Boscobel Wisconsin.

On behalf of my family, I want to thank you all for joining us here to celebrate Colleen Ann Clifford Barnett. This space is - without a doubt - the spiritual center of gravity for our family, and you, her family and friends, are all she would have asked for today.

Our mother was born in Green Bay and grew up as Packer royalty thanks to her father’s seminal role in that franchise. The Packers were everything to Mom and, on that basis, remain everything to her family.

An example: my wife Vonne and I switched faiths for a time, during which we baptized our second child Kevin as Episcopalian. Mom attended but wept openly during the entire ceremony. On the way out she fiercely hugged me and declared, “It could have been worse, Thomas."

"How?" I said.

She replied, "You could have become a Bears fan.”

Colleen Clifford met and fell in love with John Barnett, her husband of more than 50 years, at the University of Wisconsin law school. Upon their marriage, she left law school – hold that thought – and moved with John to Boscobel.

Colleen bore John 9 babies in 15 years – a testament to her love of children, physical endurance, and, as she liked to brag over the years, her profoundly loving relationship with our Father.

Mom was a fiercely protective parent, and her feats of strength were legend within our family. Once, during a hot summer mass in this church, we were sitting in the last row to accommodate Mom’s weakened state – as she had just been released from the hospital following surgery. Our sister Maggie, feeling dizzy from the heat, got up to go to the bathroom. On her way, she bumped into the holy water tank, alerting Mom, who immediately vaulted over the pew and caught Maggie before she hit the ground!

As Colleen’s last child entered grade school here, she joined Grant County’s social services department, where she helped establish many important programs that persist to this day.

Retiring at 62, our mother was re-admitted to the UW law school, becoming a genuine celebrity among her classmates. There was a longtime UW law professor who – as legend had it - had never been bested by any student in a mock cross-examination – until Colleen.

Now imagine being 19 years old and entering our living room at midnight with … something  … on your breath – only to see Mom squinting at you from her recliner. Like that professor, you never really had a chance.

After law school, Colleen spent a decade working as a lawyer, divorce mediator, and instructor at UW Richland Center.

If that wasn’t enough, Mom began her writing career in her seventies, methodically authoring the definitive three-volume encyclopedia of leading women characters in mystery fiction – triggering her celebrity within that literary circle, to include nominations for industry awards and presentations at national conventions.

Mom had an incredible drive and boundless curiosity – all of which she imparted to her children and this community by serving on boards, commissions, and councils.

Mom was brilliant at organizing things and people, setting goals, and motivating action. "Make your life an adventure," she would tell us. "Never regret your failures, for they are the making of you."

True to form, Mom constantly experimented as a parent, making us in the process

An antique cow bell called us home for dinner, on time and salivating like Pavlov's dogs.

Reading lights clipped to our beds made us all avid readers.

Our childhood was a never-ending series of challenges, competitions, and tests. I was introduced to public speaking well before kindergarten, thanks to Mom’s question of the day at our dinner table each night. The Barnett kids had to speech for their supper.

Tie your shoes for the first time? $5 from Mom. 

Ride your bike - no training wheels - around the block without stopping?  Another $5.

Let's be honest here: a lot of Mom's schemes were thinly devised efforts to get us kids out of the house.  Her favorite way to dismiss us was to bark, "Now get out of here!"

When our brothers - first Andrew, then Jim, ultimately Ted - were diagnosed with dyslexia, thanks to Mom's persistence at a time before learning disabilities were even recognized, she had numerous experimental devices built to exercise their hand-eye coordination. Mom made those drills seem so cool that neighbor kids would line up to do them. To this day I brag about almost being dyslexic – I was this close to getting that badge!

Mary Poppins had nothing on Mom.

After Dad died, Mom left Boscobel to live with our sister Maggie in St Paul. There, she became in-house grandma to Maggie’s daughter Ally.

That transition softened up Mom quite a bit, but she was still Mom. Every year I’d get this gloriously worded birthday card: you are the best son in the world, and so on. Then I’d glance down and see, in her handwriting: “Don’t let it go to your head! …. Love, Mom.”

We'd ask Mom, "Who's your favorite child?" She'd reply, "The one who needs me most right now" - a promise she always kept.

It has been an incredible privilege to have Colleen in our lives all those 95 years – a blessing beyond calculation.

And so, I ask for your continued prayers – not for Mom and her soul; trust me, God skipped that cross – but for whatever you hold most dear and for our world at large. Nobody believed more in prayer than Colleen.

Every child grows up thinking that the world is just like their family.

All I can say, in conclusion, about Colleen Ann Clifford Barnett, is that she left her 7 surviving children – and by extension her two dozen grand and great-grandchildren – a wondrous, beautiful, adventure-filled world where parents live for children, marriage is for life, and love is forever.

All this ... because two people fell in love.

Mom, thanks for everything.

Dad, she's all yours.