Barbara Ann Bunce

Barbara Bunce, a long-time local resident of Aspen, passed away May 10, 2017. She was born in Bernardsville, New Jersey, and was the third of the four daughters raised by Edgar and Elizabeth Bunce. After graduating from Kent Place Prep School, she followed in her family’s tradition and went for her college degree at Duke University.

Immediately after college, Barb headed West. She settled in Aspen, Colorado in October 1974, and quickly embraced the storied Aspen lifestyle of the 1970s. She participated in the fierce softball town league and played for Cooper St. Pier. In the winter, like all locals, she skied. Barb worked at Aspen Sports, then started working in the Aspen Skiing Company’s lift ticket office at the beginning of the 1977-78 ski season. As group and international skier days increased, Barb was promoted to manager of the Advance Ticket Sales office. She worked for ASC for 23 years. Like most locals, she worked two jobs and her favorite second job was at a restaurant just down the street from her ticket job in the North of Nell building. At the end of her day shift, Barb would don her Hawaiian shirt and walk the three blocks over to her cocktail waitress job at The Chart House. After her career at Aspen Skiing Company, Barb returned to the North of Nell building and spent several years working for North of Nell Condominiums. Like all locals who discovered Aspen in the 70s, Barb loved to recount the tales that have become urban legends of life in a small but exceptional mountain town–before things got complicated.

Barb leaves behind her husband of 30+ years, Tom Cooper, her sisters Judy (in Florida) and Kathy and Mary Beth Bunce (in New Jersey), and the entourage of friends who admired her quick and dry wit, and her reserved but resolute presence over the years of her unordinary life.