Mollie Will Be Missed

By Duncan Horscroft on April 26, 2012 in News

One person who thoroughly deserved the accolades of being Forever Fabulous was my mother-in-law, Mary ‘Mollie’ Love Barton, who sadly passed away on Monday, March 19, aged 92.

As a child growing up in the tough coal-mining town of Cessnock, she learned at an early age how to survive in harsh conditions in a male-dominated society still reeling from the affects of WWI, which ended only two years before her birth.

Mollie used the knowledge from her early education in life to graduate from Teachers College at Armidale.

In 1951 she gave birth to twin girls, my wife Margaret and her sister Judith.

She became a single mother when the girls were two years old, but that didn’t stop her from pursuing her career as well as caring for her darling ‘twinnies’.

Mollie became a teacher at Double Bay Public School, where both girls attended, before the death of her mother saw her and the girls move to Como to care for her father Oscar.

It was a role Mollie was familiar with and she never let her family values deteriorate despite the extra pressure on her.

After Oscar’s passing, Mollie and the girls moved back to Double Bay and a few years later I was fortunate enough to meet this statuesque woman who put the fear of God in me when I had to ask for her daughter’s hand in marriage.

Mollie was always on the side of the knockabout and for that reason her and I got on famously well.

Her middle name was Love and that was something she gave everyone that knew her.

Rest in peace Mollie B.