July 15, 1946 – Aug. 25, 2023
Barbara J. Hole, prominent as a philanthropic fundraiser locally for more than 30 years, died Aug. 25 in her Buffalo home after a short struggle with pancreatic cancer. She was 77.
Her efforts enhanced the work of the Buffalo Science Museum, Kaleida Health and the University at Buffalo, where she finished her career as a vice president and senior philanthropic adviser in the Division of Philanthropy and Alumni Engagement.
The Western New York Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals said in a tribute on its Facebook page, “Her legacy lives on in the organizations she helped build, the people her work supported, and her many colleagues who learned from her example.”
Born Barbara A. Johnson in Buffalo, she was the youngest of three children and graduated in 1964 from Kenmore West High School.
As a single mother with three children of her own, she began taking classes at what was then Buffalo State College and earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism. She later completed a master’s degree in organizational communication and leadership at Canisius College, now Canisius University.
Writing as Barbara Harasym, she contributed numerous freelance articles to The Buffalo News in the early 1980s. During that time, she also was a volunteer exhibit coordinator at the Buffalo History Museum.
In 1984 she organized the exhibit “Sports in Buffalo, 1830s to 1980s,” for which she found a restored 1939 midget racing car like those that competed in Civic Stadium in the 1940s and 1950s and a bat used by Ollie Carnegie in the 1930s when he set the Bisons home run record. The following year, she was appointed the museum’s administration and operations director.
She was married in 1986 to George T. Hole, Ph.D., a philosophy professor at Buffalo State, and she went to the Buffalo Museum of Science as development officer in 1988, coordinating grants and overseeing the volunteer program. She was promoted to associate development director in 1990 and became development director in 1993. She was appointed in 1990 to the Council for the New York State Association of Museums, the only Western New Yorker on the 12-member council.
She became executive director of the Millard Fillmore Health, Education and Research Foundation in the late 1990s, and was the founding director of the Kaleida Health Foundation. She went to UB in 2006, retiring in 2018.
At the time of her death, she was president-elect of the Rotary Club of Buffalo and a member of the board of directors of the Richardson Olmsted Campus.
She was a former member of the YMCA board of directors, the Canisius High School Parents Council, the Canisius College Wehle Business Advisory Council and the SUNY Advancement Council.
A former member of the board of directors of the Western New York chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, she was honored as Outstanding Fund-Raising Executive of the Year in 2002.
She also was an adjunct professor in the Wehle Business School at Canisius College and served informally as a mentor for younger colleagues.
“They would ask for career advice, life advice,” her daughter Elizabeth “Liz” Hole said. “She was that person who everybody went to.”
An enthusiastic traveler, she particularly enjoyed hiking in the high peaks of the Adirondacks and elsewhere. An account of her trek on the Camino de Santiago in Spain with her daughter Elizabeth in 2019 appeared in a My View column in The Buffalo News.
A longtime resident of Buffalo’s Central Park neighborhood before moving to the Elmwood Village a few years ago, she played the piano, enjoyed bridge and euchre, and did knitting, quilting and needlepoint. She also was an avid gardener, reader and cook.
In addition to her husband, survivors include a son, Steven Harasym; three daughters, Kristen Sciolino, Lauren Hole and Elizabeth Hole; two brothers, Donald Johnson and David Johnson; and four grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday in Westminster Presbyterian Church, 724 Delaware Ave.
Email danderson@buffnews.com.
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