In Loving Memory of Barbara Dowling

Barbara Dowling, well-known Littlefield guest from Melbourne, Australia, who has come to Littlefield celebrations honoring Waylon Jennings, since her first visit here with her mother, Mary Dowling, in 1988, will now be missed with her special visits.

She died Thursday, Dec. 9, 2020 in a hospital in Melbourne, Australia, where she had been a patient for a couple of weeks undergoing treatment for cancer.

Tomorrow, Dec. 17, 2020 would have been her birthday, which her close friends in Littlefield are guessing to be her 79th or 80th (they aren’t sure).

They said she wanted to be cremated and brought back to Littlefield, which she has claimed as “my home.”

While here, she always stayed in the Waylon Jennings Room at the Crescent Park Motel.

Colleen Lavallee-Alteri, one of the managers of the Crescent Motel, had a message for the people of Littlefield.

“Per Barbara’s cousin and caregiver, Sue Plaisted, Barb wished to thank all of her friends in Littlefield. Sue would like to add her thanks to everyone who took such good care of Barbara.

“Personally, I would like to add that during Barbara’s stays at the Crescent Park Motel, Mike and I had many great gab fests with her in the afternoons while she was waiting for Neil West to pick her up for ‘happy hour’ with himself and wife, Carolyn.

“Sometimes accompanied by a beer or two, we just never seemed to get enough of our conversations with her. She was funny, smart, full of stories and full of life. She loved our pups and always had a snack hiding in her bag for them.

“She became more than just a motel guest, more than just a friend. She became family to us. We will miss that wonderful, fierce woman for all of our days.”

Colleen expressed her thank you to the Leader-News for honoring Barbara. “To her, Littlefield was her home.” she concluded.

Barbara, who was blind because she lost her sight in her early 20’s, has had many friends in Littlefield, who have gone with her on special trips, invited her to their homes, and picked her up and escorted her to the special events happening in and around Littlefield while she was here.

Gift to Museum

On one of Barbara’s visits, she had followed the mailing and arrival in Littlefield of six boxes of her collection of 175 Waylon Jennings’ albums (mostly 33s and some cassette tapes and CDs) to the Duggan House Museum.

Barbara told this reporter: “With the Centennial, I thought I’d do it, but after I mailed them, I felt realy sick—I thought all my insides had been ripped out.

“I thought about me riding all over the world, for me to buy all those albums,” she reminisced.

Neil and Carolyn West bought a player for the Museum, as a memorial to Doyle Patton, to play the Waylon records.

Special concert

In 2018, the Wests were treated with a special visit from Barbara, who was bringing country music performer Billy Payne to the West home for a private concert.

The Littlefield back yard of the West home was converted into a stage for a four-hour concert by Billy Payne for Barbara’s Littlefield friends who had become her “family”.

She was especially “hooked” on Waylon Jennings and his music, and began her fascination with Littlefield, because of Waylon, a native of Littlefield. He died in Arizona on Feb. 13, 2002, of complications with diabetes.

Barbara’s visits were very special to the Littlefield and Lamb County area, and her yearly visits will definitely be missed.