My Obituary

Barbara Anne Radtke ~ November 2, 1947-October 31, 2025

By Barbara Anne Radtke

Born on November 2,1947 in Hackensack, New Jersey, Barbara was the daughter of the late Conrad James Radtke and late Anne (Henzel) Radtke. Her first home was the house in Hackensack that her grandfather Max Otto Radtke had designed and built and where her father had been raised.

She lived in Westwood NJ during her elementary and high school years. She graduated from St. Andrew School (Westwood) and Immaculate Heart Academy (Washington Township, NJ). She began college majoring in architecture at Catholic University of America (CUA), but ultimately graduated from CUA with a B.A. and an M.A. in Religion and Religious Education. She earned a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Boston College in a program jointly administered by Boston College’s Department of Theology and Andover Newton Theological School, now known as Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School.

Barbara shaped her professional life by being a religious educator in a parish and being an instructor/administrator in higher education. As a religious educator, she engaged students in every grade level (K-12). She also served as a parish Director of Religious Education in Virginia Beach, VA and Damascus, MD. In higher education, she taught both undergraduate and graduate students, especially those grad students preparing for ministry. She served as full-time faculty at Emmanuel College (Boston, MA) and Notre Dame College (Manchester, NH). She served as part-time faculty at LaSalle University’s (Philadelphia, PA) summer religion program and Boston College (Chestnut Hill, MA).

At Notre Dame College she helped establish the Ministry Institute and eventually served as its director. In 2001, she was awarded Notre Dame College’s Faculty of the Year Award. At Boston College, she established the online faith formation program C21 Online, which eventually became CSTM Online: Crossroads in the Clough Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. She was the inaugural director of the Clough School of Theology’s Continuing Education. She relinquished that role to pursue online instructional design for faith formation courses. During her tenure, she designed about 50 learning experiences for the Crossroads program.

Barbara is the author of Understanding the Sacraments: The Fabric of Our Catholic Lives, Entering the Next Stage with Grace: A Spiritual Approach to Retirement, and a number of articles and book reviews. During her career she gave numerous presentations at parishes and local religious education gatherings. After retirement, she and her friend Kathy Hendricks created Still Blooming (stillblooming.blog), a blog expressing the viewpoint of women in their 70s and older.

Barbara had many part-time jobs while she pursued her education. She worked retail, baby sat, drafted construction details for retail sales space and, as a young teen, ran a small “enterprise” of helping mothers give birthday parties for small children. While pursuing her Masters she drafted construction details for the D.C. Metro and was a teacher’s aide in Bladensburg (MD) Junior High. While pursuing her doctorate, she was a work study student in the archives of Andover Newton Theological School, an experience which informed her doctoral pursuits.

Barbara was an avid Girl Scout from second grade through high school. She loved to travel. After college she drove cross country with two friends, heading West through Canada and returning back east across a northern U.S. route. She and her husband Andrew toured locations in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. She found both relaxation and enjoyment at the ocean locations. She vacationed for many years in the Boothbay Harbor region of Maine where she photographed many of the light houses that dotted the coast and major waterways. She was grateful to her sister Teri and brother-in-law Bill for their generous hospitality in sharing their home on Block Island, RI for many summer visits. She found it nourishing to immerse herself in art and enjoyed going to many exhibits in New England museums. Above all she valued family and friends. The family gathering at Thanksgiving, graciously hosted by her sister and brother-in-law, was always a highlight of the year. A meeting with friends for a discussion or a meal was always a gift with a sacramental flavor.

In addition to her parents Conrad J. Radtke and Anne H. Radtke, Barbara is pre-deceased by her husband of 28 years, Andrew Hodyke, her brothers Michael J. Radtke, and Bruce M. Radtke. She is survived by her brother Steven Radtke and his wife Rondi; her sister Therese McCombe and brother-in-law William A. McCombe; her sister-in-law Gail Hodyke; nephews and nieces David Grigsby, Sarah Hill, Trevor McCombe, Mark Radtke, Thomas Radtke, and Danika Wright; and grand-nieces and grand-nephews including Rowan Andrew McCombe.

My Response

By Kathy Hendricks

Every other month or so, Barbara and I would meet over Zoom to plan out the next few blogs for “Still Blooming.” In one of those sessions, she told me she had written her own obituary as part of a writing course. By this time, nothing she did surprised me because she was always engaged in something interesting and unique. After sharing a laugh over an obituary as a writing assignment, we decided it would make a great blog. Little could either of us have known that hers would be the final post.

I am still absorbing this deep loss – not only for myself but also for Barbara’s sister, Teri, and the entire Radtke family as well as the many friends, colleagues, and admirers Barbara had. Tributes to her are popping up in all sorts of places. The ways in which she touched so many lives is evident in the heartfelt remembrances and the laments over her death.

It was over three years ago when she first pitched the idea about writing a joint blog. She had already given it a title. Given that we were both recently retired but also still quite active in pursuits driven by our respective interests, the image of flowers still in bloom made perfect sense.

In addition to the excuse it gave us to meet online even more often, the co-authorship opened up a range of topics that we might not otherwise have pursued on our own. The conversational approach, with one of us taking the lead and the other responding, led to further insights. It was always a delight to see the strands Barbara would pull forth from the blogs I wrote as well as the connections she would make in her own. It was indicative of her brilliant mind and her creative spirit. Barbara had a knack for seeing beyond the obvious and for finding something worthwhile in just about every experience. Her endless curiosity kept her engaged with all sorts of new and interesting pursuits. Just reading the “extra-curricular” activities in her obituary gives a glimpse into what some of these are. She once described herself as a “Renaissance woman” because her doctoral studies led her in many different directions rather than a single focus.

I could go on and on about the many ways she enriched and blessed my life. The nearly four decades of our friendship and the many lovely memories of visits shared in person, online, and through email soften the blow of her death and the enormous hole it leaves in my heart and in the hearts of so many who loved and cherished her. She was still blooming until the very end.

And so, dear readers, as Barbara and I often invited you to do, I leave open the comments for your own remembrances. Once these run their course, it will be time to close out the blog. Thank you for following us over the past three years and for taking part in the conversation. May you follow Barbara’s lead by remaining engaged with and ever curious about this wondrous gift of life.