Graham, Barbara Ellen (Nee Johnson) Barbara Ellen Graham, 77, died Monday after a 25 month long courageous and hard fought battle against pancreatic cancer. After being diagnosed with the disease in mid-December of 2014, Barbara and her family sought out the best medical treatment possible and found it at the Froedtert Memorial Hospital Cancer Center in Wauwatosa. Never once during her illness did Barbara ask why she had been singled out for this dreadful disease. Instead, her example strengthened the will of loved ones and near the end of her life Barbara asked her doctors to take tumor tissue in an effort to find evidence that might help keep her two daughters from facing the same disease. During her long battle, Barbara was able to be with her family for the next three Christmas seasons before the disease began to spread at the end of December of 2016. Barbara was born on January 11, 1940, in Superior, WI. As an infant and young girl during World War II, Barbara and her parents, Charles and Clara Johnson, criss-crossed the country several times between Superior and southern California, where her father sought better employment opportunities. The family loved sunny California but Charles' health issues forced them to return several times to Superior so Charles could receive medical treatment at the Mayo Clinic. After the war, the family moved to Suring, WI, where Clara, a pharmacist, ran the family drug store. There, before she reached her teens, Barbara learned to make the best chocolate soda in northern Wisconsin, or so she said over the years. By then, brother Charles and sister Clara Lee had joined the family. After graduating from Suring High School in 1957, Barbara enrolled in Ripon College, and graduated with a degree in English in 1961. By then, her father had died and her mother moved the family to the south side of Milwaukee where Clara found new employment as a pharmacist at St. Luke's Hospital. Barbara accepted a job as an ad writer for a downtown Milwaukee company and when the firm offered higher paying employment in the fresh new world of computer programming -- something Barbara knew nothing about -- she applied and became a programmer. At a wedding in the summer of 1962, Barbara met Patrick Graham, a recent graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She was the maid of honor and he was the best man. A first date, a concert at Ravinia, north of Chicago, led to a courtship and Pat accepted a job as a reporter at the Milwaukee Journal. They were married in Milwaukee on October 5, 1963, and Pat joked over the next 53 years of marriage that Barbara could never remember their wedding date. A few years later, their first daughter Karen Victoria was born, and the family moved into a house in Whitefish Bay. Three years later, daughter Kristin Barbara was born. Karen graduated from Carleton College and received her MBA with high honors from the University of Chicago. Kristin graduated from Northwestern University and received her law degree from Northwestern University Law School with high honors. Karen is a partner in a Chicago financial consulting firm and Kristin is a partner at Quarles & Brady in Madison. After the girls finished high school, Barbara joined an event planning company and later purchased and ran the company for many years. Later, Barbara said she wanted to learn about tax preparation so she became a tax preparer for H&R Block in Glendale for several years. Besides tending to her own flower garden at home, Barbara was a longtime and active member of the Whitefish Bay Garden Club. Besides her husband and two daughters, Barbara is survived by her two adoring grandchildren, Liam and Charlotte Noel, Madison, her sister Clara Lee Balko of Neenah, several nieces and nephews and several long and short term friends. Barbara would not want this list to exclude her springer spaniel Annabelle. This cannot end without paying an enormous tribute to the man primarily responsible for allowing Barbara to live a good quality of life for 25 months after diagnosis. This would be Dr. Ben George of the Froedtert Hospital Cancer Center. Dr. George led Barbara's treatment program and was always there for sound and thoughtful advice and counsel. We can never fully express our gratitude to Dr. George and the entire staff of doctors, nurses, nurse aides and other staff at Froedtert for their efforts to extend Barbara's life. Family will greet friends on Saturday, January 21, from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM at the Feerick Funeral Home followed by "Remembrances of Barbara" at 12:00 PM. A celebratory lunch will follow the service. Interment at Union Cemetery will be private for the family. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the "We Care Fund for Innovation and Discovery", to support pancreatic cancer research, Medical College of Wisconsin/Froedtert Cancer Center, Department of Surgery (attn. Dr. Douglas Evans), 9200 W. Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53226.