DELRAY BEACH — Several years ago, Barbara Keresey shot a hole-in-one on the ninth hole of the St. Andrew’s Club. She went north for the summer, returned in the fall, and shot a consecutive hole-in-one at the same ninth hole during her first game of the season.
On July 26, Mrs. Keresey died peacefully at home, in a bedroom overlooking the scene of her two-in-a-million golfing triumph.
She was 89, and had lived at the club since 1994.
Golf was only one of Bobbie Keresey’s passions. She was also a skier, a paddle tennis player, a talented artist whose floral acrylics were recently displayed at The Little Club, and an amateur actress whose portrayal of the witch in Hansel and Gretel was an annual tradition at the children’s theater in Montclair, N.J.
“She always knew exactly what the appropriate thing was to wear, and to say,” recalls her son, Jim Keresey. “She had a sense of style and color that people appreciated, and she had a smile for everybody.”
Mrs. Keresey also founded a Meals On Wheels service to feed the elderly in Montclair, and saw it grow to encompass most of Essex County.
“I became one of her delivery boys when I was home for the summer,” her son remembers.
Barbara Latham was born in New York City on Dec. 23, 1919, but moved to Montclair when she was 3. A graduate of Montclair High School and Pine Manor College in Wellesley, Mass., she met her future husband, Dick Keresey, at a country club Christmas dance in 1939. The couple were married in 1944, following Mr. Keresey’s service as a PT-boat skipper in the Solomon Islands.
“A lady stopped me the other day and said they were an example of what a marriage should be,” Jim Keresey said. “They were totally committed to each other, and when they said for better or worse, they meant it. My father kind of doted on her.”
In addition to her husband of 65 years, she is survived by four children, Richard of New York City; James, of Oak Harbor, Wash., Mary, of Denville, N.J., and Barbara, of West Chicago, Ill.; nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Covenant House, 733 Breakers Ave., Fort Lauderdale, FL 33304.
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