New England Families

Connecticut Death Index, 1949-2001, ancestry.com
Name: Barbara A Deegan
Father's Surname: Paige
Death Date: 10 Mar 2001
Death Place: Danbury, Fairfield, Connecticut
Age: 69 Years
Birth Place: Maine
Birth Date: 27 Aug 1931
Marital Status: Married
Spouse: Rober
State File #: 05082
Occupation: HOMEMAKER
Industry: AT HOME
Education: 14
Residence : Ridgefield, Fairfield, Connecticut
Address: 75 Sugar Loaf Mtn Rd
Gender: Female
Race: White

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News-Times, The (Danbury, CT) - March 12, 2001
Deceased Name: DEEGAN, Barbara A.
DEEGAN, Barbara A., 69, of 75 Sugar Loaf Mountain Road, Ridgefield, Mar. 10, 2001. F: There will be no formal funeral or memorial service. (Kane Funeral Home, Ridgefield)
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News-Times, The (Danbury, CT)
Date: March 12, 2001
Record Number: obits719
Copyright, 2001, The News-Times (Danbury, CT)

Barbara Deegan, led Meals on Wheels

Barbara Ann Deegan of 75 Sugar Loaf Mountain Road, a founder and longtime coordinator of the Meals on Wheels program in Ridgefield, died Saturday, March 10, at Danbury Hospital. She was 69 years old and the wife of Robert A. Deegan.

Mrs. Deegan, an outdoorswoman from Maine, had a varied career that included serving as a nurse and working as a professional fly-tier. But she was best known in Ridgefield as a tireless volunteer and one of the people who established the successful Meals on Wheels program more than 25 years ago.

A native of Old Towne, Maine, Mrs. Deegan was born on Aug. 27, 1931, a daughter of the late Augustus and Ann McAllister Paige. She grew up in Maine and attended nursing school there.

In 1951, Mrs. Deegan moved to Stamford where she worked as a psychiatric nurse at the former Stamford Hall Psychiatric and Rehabilitation Hospital.

Twelve years later, she and her husband moved to Ridgefield where she immediately became involved in the Ridgefield branch of the American Red Cross, at first as a donor and eventually as the chief of the Bloodmobile visits in town. She worked with the Aid to Disaster Victims program here in the 1960s, and helped manage the community shelter during the famous December 1973 ice storm that shut down the town for nearly a week.

By early 1974, Mrs. Deegan had seen the need for a service that would provide nutritious food to shut-ins and others in need of delivered meals. "We want to help people widowed or living alone," she said that year. "People who have no desire to cook and are in the tea and toast syndrome. We want to help people keep their independence, stay in their homes, not have to go to a nursing home to get proper nutrition."

That fall, Meals on Wheels was up and running from a kitchen at St. Mary's School basement. In its first year of operation, some 5,000 meals were served. Today, more than 16,000 are served annually.

For many years, Mrs. Deegan was the chief cook, coordinator, and purchasing agent for Meals on Wheels, which grew to have more than 100 volunteers by the 1980s. The organization was often strapped for funds and she had to spend carefully. "I study the food ads on Sunday," she said in 1981, "and at 8 a.m. Monday, I'm in the grocery store, any one that has bargains."

Mrs. Deegan retired from Meals on Wheels in the late 1980s. Darwin Yoran, current president of the organization, said Ridgefield's Meals on Wheels is one of the few in the state that is entirely independent of government. "Barbara and the two other founders had the foresight to establish an independent, nonaffiliated organization so we don't have any of the constraints on services or quotas to meet," he said. "We can serve the needs of Ridgefielders as the needs arise."

For her work with both the Red Cross and Meals on Wheels, Mrs. Deegan was given the Outstanding Citizen of the Year Award by the Jaycees in 1975.

Mrs. Deegan was also a volunteer at the Ridgefield Thrift Shop and taught needlepoint and crafts to senior citizens.

She and her husband loved the outdoors and often went camping and fishing. Her interest in fishing led her to a hobby of fly-tying that turned into a profession. In the 1960s, she was supplying a half-dozen outdoor sports stores in Fairfield County with flies and other lures she created at home. They bore such colorful names as Midnight Fancy, Seboomook, Evening Star, and Marian's Favorite.

"I once tried a month to make a muddler minnow," she said in a 1965 interview. "I take a great deal of pride in my flies. I feel as though I'm an artist at this."

Besides her husband, Mrs. Deegan has no immediate survivors.

There will be no formal funeral services.

Contributions in her memory may be made to the Visiting Nurse Association, 90 East Ridge, or to Meals on Wheels, 25 Gilbert Street.
The Kane Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.