Barbara Lynn Hamilton Osterhoudt left home within weeks of her high-school graduation and came with a friend in search of work to Arizona, where she beavered away at a Scottsdale bank for a year before winning her model job at Arizona State University, Tempe. 

Her long tenure at ASU began in the photography laboratory, then continued in the purchasing division, in library acquisitions, and in the Department of Kinesiology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. 

She served with acclaim as the Administrative Assistant in this Department over the last ten years of her distinguished thirty-year career at the University. She expertly managed this Department, which was among the largest, most diverse (in respect to subject), and most contentious units in the institution, until forced into early retirement in 1995 by an especially severe case of rheumatoid arthritis. 

She was appropriately honored as ASU's Classified Staff Council Supervisor of the Year in 1992. 

Barbara was preceded in death by her parents and by her elder daughter.

She is survived by her younger daughter, her two sisters, her husband, Bob; her two grandsons, her granddaughter, her two step-sons, her step-daughter, her five step-grandsons, seven great grandchildren; and two great step-grandchildren. 

A memorial service honoring Barbara will be arranged within the next several weeks.