Barbara P. Polcen

Passed on October 9, 2018. Barbara was born on April 22, 1928 to Jedian Parrow and Florence Potvin Parrow in Williston, Vermont and raised in Winooski and Jericho, Vermont. She was married to Edward Polcen, coincidentally born in Williston, South Carolina, from 1955 until his passing in 1994.

Barbara was the valedictorian of her two-person graduating class at Jericho High School. She graduated from the University of Vermont in 1949 and taught English and coached basketball for two years before she permanently escaped the bone-chilling cold of her home state. She began her career in the clandestine services with the Central Intelligence Agency in 1951. She left the CIA in 1955 to marry and begin a new career raising children. Barbara and Edward had six children: Catherine, Lisa, Jane, Lynn, Michael, and Kristin. As the family grew they moved to successively larger apartments in Langley Park, Maryland. In between raising the kids and taking them to the local Hot Shoppes for breakfast, Barbara earned a degree in Russian from the University of Maryland (I think you can see where she was going with this).

Barbara and Edward bought a home in Edgewater, Maryland in 1978 and Barbara rejuvenated her career as a US spy, working for the National Security Agency from 1977 to 1997. She revealed no secrets, telling her children only that she spoke Russian and worked at NSA, leaving them to figure out the rest.  After Edward’s passing in 1994, Barbara worked for three more years until her retirement. Upon the conclusion of her covert government activities, she enjoyed travel, reading, and spending time with her cats: George, Kitty (not really-thanks Mike), and Max (see photo). She also enjoyed Shakespeare and musicals at the Kennedy Center, Folger, and National Theaters. She especially delighted in sitting in the front row when Mikhael Baryshnikov appeared at the Shakespeare Theater in Chekov’s Man in a Case. She may even have come close to fainting.

Barbara spent much of her life with Edward. As he told it, they met when she lived in Washington DC and he came to her apartment to repair her television. However, Edward was a notorious exaggerator and his children are unable to verify this scenario. As much as he tried to get her to enjoy his traditional Southern cooking, her Northern palate resisted. Despite her protestations that the smell of peanuts boiling on the stove stunk up the house, Edward, to Barbara’s dismay, was able to instill the love of boiled peanuts in each of her children.

Barbara leaves behind eight wonderful grandchildren: Jessica, Cassandra, Jaime, Gregory, Lindsey, Rita, Zoe, and Killian. She adored spending time with her in-laws Joe (Catherine), Dave (Lisa), Sonja (Mike), and Kyle (Jaime). She also leaves behind her beloved Max.