Page created by: Barbara Dondiego

It is with heavy hearts that we share the passing of our mother, Barbara Dondiego Holmes. She passed away on Friday, January 22, 2021, after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease, ultimately succumbing in her final days to COVID-19. Barbara is survived by her son Terry Michael Cornelia; daughters Barbara Dondiego Stewart, Elizabeth Dondiego Cossick, and Mary McChesney; and 9 grandchildren.

Barbara grew up in West Virginia, went to graduate school in Oregon, and eventually settled in Marietta, Georgia, to raise her family.

Her family was always the center of her life and the benefactor of her immense creativity. When her children were young, she invented dozens of crafts that could be made from common household items. Spending an afternoon at the kitchen table making piggy banks out of salt boxes and snowglobes out of empty baby-food jars was a regular occurrence. To say there were dozens of empty toilet-paper rolls hoarded away in the basement is not an exaggeration. These projects eventually led to a series of books published by Tab/McGraw-Hill, including Year-Round Crafts for Kids and a dozen other titles. Barbara even starred as ‘The Art Mom’ on a local Atlanta children’s television program called The Pam & Buffy Show (search for it on YouTube if you want a good chuckle 🤣). All that to say, she was an amalgam of Pinterest, Etsy and Instagram before those mediums ever existed.

While crafting became her career, cooking was her true claim to fame among all lucky enough to be invited to her dinner parties or seated around her kitchen table. She loved to care for others through food, and the kitchen was always the center of her family’s universe: bubbling pots of marinara on the stove, homemade zucchini bread fresh out of the oven, her award-winning chocolate chip streusel muffins cooling on the kitchen island. When her children were teenagers, Barbara would leverage her cooking prowess to entice her children’s friends over on Friday nights or Saturday mornings, keeping everyone close by. With an old Folgers can sitting by the stove as a repurposed bacon-fat container, she became well known for her infamous “bacon waffles.” As adults, her children loved to tease her that her advanced degree in nutrition couldn’t quite expel the “West Virginia” from her cooking.

As a cook and a crafter, Christmas was the season in which she truly shined. She would make hundreds of cookies in multiple varieties for what surely must have been every family within a dozen miles. Her “cookie trays,” as she called them, were dispersed every year far and wide. Her holiday pièce de résistance was undoubtedly her gingerbread boy decorating parties, which would span an entire day and include every child known by her, from the family doctor’s children to the kids three blocks away. She would spend weeks making armies of homemade gingerbread cookies and vats of buttercream icing (no royal icing for her, no thank you!). This tradition is carried on by several of her children still today.

Animals were another soft spot. Barbara loved all animals and had many tales of rescuing baby possums or other stranded wildlife when she was a child. As a result, our childhood home was a menagerie of sorts: dogs, cats, hamsters, gerbils (one of which she had to have neutered when the two “males” produced a few dozen babies within a couple months’ time), mice, rescued sparrows, fish, hermit crabs, baby chicks, and more. Her most beloved personal pet was our male white Persian cat named “Sassy.” By accident during one unfortunate bath time for Sassy, Barbara added too much laundry bluing to his bathwater in an attempt to brighten his fur. He became a blue puffball, which inspired her to subsequently add varying shades of food coloring to his bath from then on: green for St. Patrick’s Day, pink for Valentine’s. Pink was the favorite, and Barbara would get a kick out of the reactions of unsuspecting guests when a pink cat would streak by. Her “rare peach Persian,” she would explain with a wink.

Later in life, Barbara was proud to earn her doctorate in education from Marshall University. She went on to teach at Marshall and even led the Central West Virginia Writing Project, sharing her passion for writing with many aspiring students.

More recently, she received wonderful care at her assisted living facility in Acworth and was always happy to have visitors, especially her children and grandchildren. She would fondly recall favorite memories and enjoyed looking at her now-yellowed recipe cards (even recently telling her children to “hide the zucchini bread recipe because everyone’s always after that one”). Her legacy lives on in her animal-loving, bacon-raised, craft-making children and grandchildren … who still have a tinge of guilt every time they throw away a toilet paper roll.

Our family will not be hosting an in-person. service at this time due to the pandemic, but we may host a virtual memorial in the coming days. More details to follow. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. We would love to see your memories and wishes here or on her tribute page.