Barbara Lee Stultz, 1936–2026

“Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you.”

This was one of Barbara Lee Stultz’s myriad sayings. She repeated it (and many other maxims) throughout her life. The bear finally caught up to her on 5 February 2026, after suffering through several years of dementia.

Many of you reading this likely know that it was a long road to this moment—that there were many losses to the disease before her last day.

Barbara lived her life—as a mother, grandmother, sister, daughter, friend, administrator, traveler, reader, and puzzle solver—fully. She had undying love for travel and adventure, was passionate about books, and instilled in her kids a desire to anticipate and embrace the horizons they could not yet see. She taught her children to rise above any complacency that would keep them from achieving the potential she could see in them.

She was born and raised in Dallastown and attended St. Joseph’s School and York Catholic. Later, her family moved to Shiloh. Her father Lawrence Eck was a machinist, a musician, and barbershopper. Her mother Genevieve Stough Eck was a homemaker. Barbara was the oldest of three children. Her grandparents had a farm and grew flowers for local florists. She had many fond memories of her time spent with them. After high school, she took a position with a print shop. She met her future husband there when he, an architectural apprentice, would bring in schematics for reproduction.

For many years, Barbara was a full-time homemaker and mother and volunteered with St. Partrick’s church and school. During this time, she instilled in her children a love of books and reading, of cooking, of games and puzzles, of theater arts, and of humor. She also imparted a dislike of yardwork, which remains with all of her kids today. Barbara sent her children to parochial school, which kept household money tight. However, she would save up money to take her kids out to dinner at nice restaurants so that they would know how to behave in them properly when they were adults (it worked!). She was an expert on Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine but also liked to experiment in the kitchen. Her kids grew up with both chicken pot pie and Julia Child. She loved the local farmers’ markets and the seasonal abundance there.

Later, she went to work as a secretary with the York County Realtor’s Association. All the operational skills she mastered as a homemaker she applied to her job. She worked her way up to become the association’s assistant administrator. She worked there for almost 35 years.

While employed, she saw her son through college and into journalism. She freed her daughters to discover their callings and supported them when those passions didn’t turn out as planned. She saw her children married and reveled in being a grandmother to three granddaughters.

Barbara’s retirement was spent as an empty nester, but she never stopped mothering. Even well into their adulthoods, her children could count on her for wise counsel, sage advice, medical diagnoses, and even monetary assistance upon occasion. Later in life, she achieved a lifelong dream of seeing California and the Pacific Ocean. Later still, she got a passport and became an international traveler, visiting Canada, the Bahamas, the UK, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

A year or so after Barbara’s last international trip, her children noticed her forgetting things. They packed up her Pennsylvania life and moved her to Maryland to be closer to them. There, she started to forget stories she used to tell, and she increasingly became unsure of herself and lost her train of thought. She started putting Post-It notes everywhere to remind her of things. Her kids patiently answered the same questions over and over and over again because she would forget she had already asked them. It became clear that living independently was no longer an option. She moved to assisted living and then into memory care.

She led a long, healthy life despite a bit of heart disease and a breast cancer scare (which she thankfully eventually forgot all about). Barbara never fell, never broke a bone, never needed a joint replaced. She enjoyed walks and nature and sunshine and family well into her 80s. She spent her 80th birthday seeing a Broadway show and drinking champagne at Sardi’s. Once dementia took over, she didn’t understand she had become a great grandmother, but she still enjoyed her great grandkids so much. Nothing could calm her like interacting with babies and toddlers.

Barbara is survived by her son Mark Stultz and his wife Miranda Telollari-Stultz; her daughter Stephanie Stultz Capo and her husband Jeffrey Capo; her daughter Deborah Stultz and her husband Thomas Jaehnigen; granddaughters Sydney Ellison, Addy Smith, and Caroline Capo; great grandchildren Carter, Wren, and Milo; nephews and a niece; and cousins too numerous to count (her father was the oldest of twelve). Her brother David Eck and sister Carole Hoke preceded her in death.

Funeral services are scheduled for 1:00 PM Saturday, February 14, 2026, at Kuhner Associates Funeral Directors, Inc., 863 South George Street, York. Burial will be in Holy Savior Cemetery.

Her family requests any memorial donations be made to the SPCA of York County, from where Barbara adopted two much-loved kitty companions; or to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, where Barbara provided donations much of her adult life.