Barbara Jean Pittman was only about five-foot-six — but, says son Larry, “She bowed up a lot taller than that.”
Her husband, Gene, puts it this way: “Barbara was rather blunt. She didn’t flower things up. You always knew where she stood — and where you stood with her.”
Daughter-in-law Kathy Pittman says that when friends learned that Barbara had died June 23 at age 89, “they would almost to a person call or text and say something like ‘Boy, she was a force of nature!’”
Former pastor Rev. Jim Oman had the same impression — “The first time I met her at church, she told me exactly what she thought of the previous pastor, and what she expected me to do differently” — and he is struck by the common theme in the recollections of family and friends:
“Barbara was who she was, the same person to everyone, all the way through her life. That kind of integrity seems to be missing a lot today. We’re afraid to say what’s on our mind because we might offend this person or that person. Barbara was not rude — she was just very direct, and always spoke her mind.
“To me,” the veteran Methodist clergyman says, “I find that sort of personal consistency to be refreshing.”
Barbara was consistent and exacting in her professional life, as well.
The daughter of a physician — Dr. Rollin Smith of West Plains — she became a registered nurse, graduating from what then was Burge School of Nursing (now Cox College) in 1955 and also earning a bachelor of science degree in nursing from Drury College (now University).
Her medical career included working as a surgical nurse in hospital operating rooms; teaching inmates at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners how to perform orderly duties in the prison infirmary; and instructing, monitoring and advising other nurses in caring for homebound patients in Springfield and surrounding Ozarks.
Barbara met Gene while in nursing school. He was training to be an X-ray technician at Burge. He laughs when recalling that he and male classmates vied to be assigned to duty when a group of new student nurses came to the radiology department as part of a mandatory physical.
“We drew straws, and I won,” he says. “And out of the whole bunch, I picked her out. I said to myself, ‘She’s the one I’m going to take a shot at.’ We started dating. And look what happened — I really did win.”
Rules of the day forbad Burge nursing students to marry until shortly before graduation. Barbara and Gene wed as soon as it was permitted. “But then they immediately sent her to Hastings, Nebraska, where there was a big mental hospital, and she had to stay up there for, gosh, three months or so for her psych training. I had to stay here because I was still in X-ray school. So that was not a pleasant experience for newlyweds.”
Barbara worked at Burge (now Cox North Hospital) while a student and at the former Springfield Baptist Hospital (now Lakeland Behavioral Health) following graduation. Although Gene successfully completed his X-ray tech training, he took a job as pharmaceutical salesman for what today is known as Pfizer, and was assigned a territory out of Salina, Kansas. During their two-year stay in Salina, Barbara worked as a surgical nurse at the now-defunct St. John’s Hospital there.
The couple returned to Springfield when Gene was transferred back home to take over a sales territory that covered a large swath of the Ozarks. That was when Barbara signed on at FedMed. “She taught prisoners how to do basic nursing duties, bedside stuff, so they could help take care of their own, so to speak,” says Gene. “She worked there until she decided she wanted to go into the home health field.”
Barbara was on the staff of the Springfield office of the Visiting Nurse Association for the next 22 years. During that time, with Gene often away from home for days on sales missions, she also pulled double duty at home with their two children, Larry and his sister, Lisa.
“Mom wore lots of hats,” says Larry. “She had to be … I don’t know if stern is the word I’m looking for but, well, she was strict because that’s what she had to do to make things work. She had a demanding job, she took care of the house, and she took care of me and my sister.
“She always managed to get it all done. We got where we needed to be and did what we needed to do — Mom saw to it.”
Larry was a serious drummer, and because he didn’t turn 16 until he was a senior at Glendale High School, he didn’t have a driver’s license during years when he played in school bands and with other musical groups.
“Mom would drive me to practice, concerts, wherever. We’d load all my stuff into the car and away we’d go. She drove me all over the place. She and my dad both were always really good about going to school concerts or shows where I was playing.
“And if someone was standing between Mom and me in her line of sight, she had no hesitation about asking them to move.”
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During those school years, Larry says, “The Pittman house was not a popular hangout, not the one that the kids came to — because Mom tolerated no shenanigans. There were other places we could go where we at least thought we could pull the wool over somebody else’s mom’s eyes. But everyone knew better than to try it at our house.”
That doesn’t mean that Barbara wasn’t a warm person, Kathy emphasizes:
“She could be stubborn, yes, and she certainly could be outspoken. But if she loved you, you were just perfect to her, and she had your back no matter what. That was such a great comfort.”
An example, says Kathy, who teaches at Barbara’s Cox College alma mater, was Barbara’s attention to family birthdays. “She made a big deal about birthdays. She did the whole thing: ‘What kind of birthday cake do you want?’ ‘What do you want for your birthday dinner?’’’
Barbara’s daughter, now Lisa Mynatt, who lives in Lexington, Kentucky, and followed the family medical tradition by becoming a radiology tech, agrees. “Larry and Dad always liked tapioca pudding, so it always was one of their birthday treats. And you might not want to put this in the paper, but Larry liked beef tongue. Nobody else did — including Mom — but for many years on his birthday Larry would be treated to a bowl of tapioca and some tongue.”
Lisa has fond memories of her mom’s version of a more traditional meat dish, beef bourguignon. She says Barbara made a killer chocolate chip bundt cake, and her pecan pie was often requested.
One of five grandchildren, Ryan Mynatt, who holds a doctorate in pharmacology and teaches at the University of Kentucky (as does his sister, Abby Mynatt Bailey), says a favorite pastime when visiting his grandmother — he called her MawMaw — was birdwatching.
“That was a big thing with her. She always had a pair of binoculars that we could use to look at the bird feeders that she had in the yard. She knew which type of bird each one was, and she would teach us. I try to get hummingbirds to come into my yard today, and that stems from going to MawMaw’s and watching the hummingbirds come close to her house there in Springfield.”
Lisa notes that her mother was a talented craftsperson. She knitted blankets to swaddle infants born into the family. She was proficient at decorative needlework. She painted landscapes and scenes of flowers, and she created colorful window art and lampshades in stained glass. She was a voracious reader, and was a volunteer worker at the Library Center.
Barbara also was a collector of things such as hobnail glassware and Lladro porcelain figurines. “And,” says Kathy, “she insisted that everyone in the family be a collector, too. She sat me down and said, ‘If you’re going to be a Pittman, you’re going to have to collect something.’”
Some family members collect such things as Pyrex glass cookware, German nutcrackers, and incense burners. A grandson once mentioned that he had trouble finding string around the house, so that Christmas his gift from Barbara was an antique string dispenser in the form of a rabbit, complete with a fist-size ball of string.
“She led me down the path of collecting 1940s dinnerware,” says Kathy, “and now I have a full set of it. Larry collects things having to do with TV’s ‘Andy Griffith Show.’ Gene collects nippers (small porcelain flasks).
“We have warned people coming into the family through marriage: ‘Be careful about what you say you like, because you may end up with a bunch of it.’”
However, discussion of Barbara with those who knew her well inevitably circles back to her direct and forceful manner.
Forcefulness was an asset
“When I was a junior in college,” says Larry, “she taught me that, if you have a problem and the first person you talk to can’t resolve it, don’t stop there. You start climbing up the ladder.
“I’d ordered a set of drums direct from the factory, but they kept sending me drums that had problems. It was the first time I’d ever bought anything on credit — borrowing money and making payments. It was a big deal for me. But I just couldn’t seem to get anywhere at fixing the problem by working with the rep for the drum company.
“So finally Mom said, ‘I’m going to get involved’ — and she called the president of the company! Next thing I knew, I had a set of drums exactly like I’d ordered, and a whole boxful of extra stuff that I did not order and did not have to pay for, plus a profuse apology from the company.”
Kathy offers a different sort of example of Barbara’s forcefulness:
“We were at a Springfield Cardinals baseball game several years ago, and Larry got hit in the face with a line drive. I said to him, ‘You’re going to the hospital to get checked out.’ But he said, ‘I’m fine.’ I repeated, ’You’re going to the hospital.’ And he said, ‘No, I’m not.’
“So finally I said, ‘I’m calling your mom!’ He went to the hospital. That was the ultimate threat. It all goes back to that ‘force of nature’ thing.”
Larry says there was one time he defied Barbara. He knew that a residual effect of her job working with prisoners at FedMed was that she strongly disliked tattoos, and earrings on men. Nevertheless:
“When I graduated from Drury in ’81, I went on the road full time with a band (Burgundy Rose) – we were going to be rock stars. So the day before we left, I got my ear pierced, because that’s what you’re supposed to do if you’re going to be in a rock ‘n’ roll band, right?
“I thought my mom and grandma had gone somewhere. But when I went home and walked in the front door, there they sat. I made a hard left turn and started down the stairs toward the basement. But Mom hollered: ‘What is that in your ear?’
“I came back up the stairs and said, ‘It’s an earring.’ So she said, “Well, you know what the deal was — pack your bags and hit the road.’ Of course, I was leaving town in the morning anyway. Then Grandma said, ‘I think it’s kind of cute.’ And Mom said, ‘Shut up, Mom!’
“For the longest time after, whenever I needed something, Mom would say: ‘I’ll trade you for that earring.’ Eventually I got tired of it and just took it out.”
Helping a ‘city boy' remove a tick
Although she excelled in her high-tech field, Barbara never forgot her rural Ozarks roots. Gene chuckles when remembering an incident in 1985 when Barbara, on her way to check on patients in Taney County, she was stopped at a roadblock set up by law enforcement agencies as they raided the compound of an extremist group known as the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) in Pontiac on the Missouri-Arkansas border.
“This FBI agent out of Washington checked inside her car and looked in the trunk. She had what was called a ‘bag phone,’ one of the first cell phones. He asked her about it and found out she was with the Visiting Nurse Association.
“So he said ‘I want to show you something’ and he pulled up his pantleg — and there was a big ol’ tick hanging off his leg. ‘What is that?’ he asked her. He’d never seen a tick — he was a city boy.
“So Barbara told him what it was, and warned him to not try to pull it off. She was explaining how to deal with it — but the longer she talked, the more pale he got. She was afraid this big FBI guy was going to faint before she finished.”
In preparing for the memorial service held July 1, the family dug out some old photos that showed Barbara through the years. Larry was surprised by a notation with her graduation photo from nursing school.
“For the first time I noticed that ‘Vice President” was written under the photo of Mom. And I thought ‘That can’t be right — there’s no way she played second fiddle to anybody. But if she did, I’d really like to meet that class president.”
Kathy was reminded of how, when their kids were young, she and Larry would gripe and groan because Barbara insisted that they come along when MawMaw took the grandkids to Halloween Spooktacular at the zoo or the annual circus at the Shrine Mosque.
“Like, how many Shrine Circuses do I really need to go to, Mom?” Larry recalls thinking at the time.
“But Barbara always gave the same answer,” notes Kathy. “She’d just say, ‘You’re making memories.’ At the time, we just thought it was a pain in the butt.
“But now we see she was right. And those memories are really precious.”
