Professional Volunteer Barbara Hancock

Life, family and friendship

Ninety-one-year-old Barbara Hancock describes her life’s work as a “professional volunteer,” with keen interests in journalism and mental health. She was a founding member of the Colorado Alliance on Mental Illness and worked successfully over many years to achieve parity in insurance coverage for serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.

Barbara, who lost her husband 12 years ago, sees herself as a living history book, having experienced many cycles of social, political, cultural, and personal change. She finds that the way people communicate changes from generation to generation. Barbara recognizes herself as having a strong awareness of injustice beginning at age 5 when she got on a bus with a black caretaker in Virginia and they were told they couldn’t sit together. She had to sit in the front and the black woman in the back. She remembers the poll tax in Virginia. It required people to pay a tax to register to vote, with the underlying purpose of preventing African Americans and poor people from voting. Experiences like those led her to see the senselessness of judging others by the color of their skin.

She offers these words of wisdom: Life, family, and friendship are miracles. Be grateful for simple things, like birds and watching the clouds. Try to live in a way that avoids building walls between people. Recognize that others’ lives are complex. Try to be honest but not blaming when things are difficult. Be authentic. Barbara believes Viva Village is a great organization and she wants to contribute to it as well as be helped by it.

This story is a collaboration between Barbara Hancock, Kathe Fradkin (interviewer), and Roberta Lang (writer).