Obituaries
Barbara "Buffy" Kay Jordan
November 10, 1943 - November 26, 2022
Obituary For Barbara "Buffy" Kay Jordan
Madison - Barbara Kay (Buffy) Jordan died of heart complications at the University of Wisconsin Hospital on Saturday, November 26. Buffy was born on November 10, 1943, the daughter of Richard Post and Agnes McCoy Post, married her high school friend Bill Jordan on June 4, 1966, and lived most of her life in Madison, with periods of residence in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Reston, Virginia and Denton, Texas as Bill pursued a career in botany, and eventually returned to Madison to work as outreach manager at the UW Arboretum.
Barbara attended Blessed Sacrament elementary school, then Edgewood High School and Edgewood College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in social sciences. A victim of polio in 1952 in what turned out to be one of the last polio epidemics, she had a tough-minded, generous and cheerful disposition, worked for three years at the UW-Madison while Bill completed his graduate studies, and rarely complaining about the residuals of polio that lasted her whole life, or about anything else.
Though always insisting that she had no talent as an artist, she had an eye for visual arts, was adept at design, and developed skills for interior decoration, which she exercised on a succession of homes as she and Bill moved around the country and passed on to her son, Bill Jordan IV, a visual artist and writer living in Minneapolis.
She entered the hospital with shortness of breath early in the evening of Wednesday, November 23. There her doctor diagnosed the heart problems that caused her death Saturday afternoon, a few minutes after 4:00 p.m.
Loving, bright and interested, she will be sorely missed by her few surviving relatives, her husband Bill III and son Bill IV, and her many friends. There will be a Mass of Christian Burial for Barbara at Blessed Sacrament Church, 2116 Hollister Ave, Madison, at 11:00 a.m. on Friday, December 9, 2022, preceded by visitation at 10:00 a.m., and followed by internment at the Farley Center Natural Path Sanctuary in Verona.
Memorial gifts to Edgewood College will support the Sr. Esther Heffernan Scholarship. Gifts can be made payable and mailed to Edgewood College, Advancement Office, 1000 Edgewood College Drive, Madison, WI 53711 or by selecting the designation of Sr. Esther Heffernan Scholarship online at https://www.edgewood.edu/give/give-now.
To view and sign this guestbook, please visit: www.ryanfuneralservice.com.
Ryan Funeral Home & Cremation Service 5701 Odana Road 608-274-1000
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10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Mass of Christian Burial
11:00 AM
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