Barbara Lou Engelhardt

Barbara was born on Feb 20, 1944 at Great Lakes Naval Base, Illinois. Her father was James P Marcacci, a Marine Staff Sergent and her mother was Margaret (Peg) H Marcacci (NEE Lloyd). She grew up in Dwight, Illinois where she made friends early in life and still had them when she died. She was preceded in death by her parents and brother Philip.

Visitation will be held at 12:00 p.m. on Tuesday, September 9th at Whitney & Murphy Funeral Home, 4800 E. Indian School Rd., Phoenix with a graveside service at 1:00 p.m. at St. Francis Catholic Cemetery, 2033 N. 48th St., Phoenix in the Mausoleum.

She was a firm believer in God and always said she had a special relationship where she could speak to Him and He’d answer. She was told by several seers that she had 3 guardian angels. She didn’t seek the seers out; they would go out of their way to come tell her that they could see them.

Barbara was an extrovert and loved being with people, especially family. Her family moved to Phoenix in 1961 where she graduated from Arcadia High School. She went to the University of Arizona where she met Andy Engelhardt. They were married on June 11, 1966 and had two daughters, Andrea and Alexandra, and 4 grandchildren, Braden, Devon, Anthony and Drew who she loved deeply. She has a great granddaughter, Aurora, but was too ill to see her before she died. Before Drew was born, she would take the 3 cousins to her cabin at Lake Tahoe and hold “cousin camp” during the summer. Her intent was to form lasting relationships between them. Her friendships were deep and lasting.

Barbara was an entrepreneur. At the U of A she studied kindergarten education, home economics and interior design. In the 1970s she and a friend formed a group of home economists to teach customers what a microwave oven could do for their lives. Amana and Panasonic hired them to represent their products and Barbara became the home economist for the Southwest region of the US for Panasonic. When the time came, she left that business and went into employee placement, eventually with 2 coworkers forming a corporation, Career Focus, to place legal secretaries in Phoenix. Next, she started another new business, Staged to Sell, to help realtors sell homes which weren’t moving. Staging homes hadn’t been talked about before then.

She spent her summers at Lake Tahoe and in retirement planning decided to remodel the cabin. She was the designer and worked for a year with the builder to design a wonderful, warm 2 story mission style home. After it was built we spent half the year there.

She lived with pain for many years and her body finally expired. All who knew her will miss her.