Barbara Burgin, spouse of former Headmaster Walter Burgin ’53, passed away of natural causes on October 31, 2025. 

Born Barbara Waddell in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on December 2, 1934, she graduated from Crafton High School in 1953 and Carnegie Mellon University in 1957 with a degree in merchandising. Shortly after graduation, she married Walter. After a summer living in Poughkeepsie, New York, where both Barbara and Walter worked at IBM, they moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where Walter began graduate study in mathematics, and Barbara started a career in women’s apparel at a local women’s store and as a buyer for the store in Manhattan.

She gave up that career when she and Walter moved to Mercersburg Academy and from there to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where Walter taught mathematics. At Phillips Exeter, they lived with their daughters in Wheelwright Hall, where Barbara welcomed the many boys living there over the years. She was active with the Exeter Day School and helped establish the League of New Hampshire Arts and Crafts store in Exeter. 

In 1972, the family moved back to Mercersburg, where Walter became headmaster. As the headmaster’s wife, Barbara improved campus life in a myriad of ways, overseeing everything from which trees were planted to what was served for lunch. She welcomed students, alumni, and faculty into their home, restored the gardens, decorated the campus for all types of events, and oversaw the renovations of numerous campus interior spaces. She also worked in the Admission Office. Her many lasting contributions to the school were recognized and honored when Mercersburg’s new Burgin Center for the Arts was named for both Barbara and Walter. 

Upon retiring from Mercersburg in 1997, she and Walter lived for nearly 20 years in Washington, D.C., where Barbara made wide-ranging contributions at historic Tudor Place in Georgetown, the Restore Mass Avenue Project, and the development of Mitchell Park as a public/private partnership with the District of Columbia. During this time, she also pruned professionally with Yankee Clippers. 

Their next move brought them back to New Hampshire. Since 1969, they spent summers in Peterborough but now they would also spend the rest of the year at RiverWoods Exeter, where Barbara served on and chaired several resident committees dealing with the exterior landscape and the design of interior spaces. As she had done wherever they lived, Barbara welcomed the chance to make the place she called home more inviting and beautiful for all who lived there. She was tireless in her devotion to the gardens at RiverWoods, always happiest when she was outside pruning. 

Her last written words were lists of landscaping improvements that could be made. As one neighbor noted, “The presence among us of her generous spirit has helped enormously to strengthen and enrich the community. For that I am very grateful.” We all are.

Barbara is survived by her husband and two daughters, Christine (husband, Bill Wegman) and Jennifer (partner, Mark Goetemann), and four grandchildren–Atlas and Lola, Luke (wife, Mollie), and Reed.