Obituary

Barbara Kreibich was such a woman of the word that her son Paul

Kreibich remembers correcting his teacher’s grammar in second grade and

getting in trouble.

She was a journalist for Life Magazine and eventually the bureau chief

for the magazine’s Paris and Rome locations. She was a writer for the

Laguna News-Post, and the editorial page editor of the Daily Pilot.

Kreibich died May 7 after battling advanced stages of Alzheimer’s

disease in a board-and-care facility in Laguna Niguel. Before arriving

there, the longtime Costa Mesa resident lived at Villa Rosa, an

Alzheimer’s institution in Newport Beach. She was 81.

Her children are proud of their mother’s journalistic success, but

what moves them today and chokes up daughter Gina Makishima is how

Kreibich was successful in the home and not just at work.

“She was a broad-minded person,” Paul Kreibich, 45, said. “She didn’t

really have any real prejudice against anybody. She was the kind of

person who could sit down with anybody from any race or class and have a

nice conversation.”

He adds that she was graceful, wonderful, someone who knew how to

spell “every single word” and supportive of whatever her kids wanted to

do.

“Supportive -- I think supportive would be a really good word,” the

jazz drummer added.

This may be why she loved overseeing the Pilot’s editorial page until

she retired in 1982, her children say. Sure, covering postwar Europe with

famed photographer Alfred Eisenstadt was the height of her career, as was

heading the Paris and Rome bureaus in the late ‘40s, but her stint at the

Pilot might have been her favorite, Paul Kreibich said.

“She definitely had a liberal point of view and she’d be writing an

editorial every day pretty much,” he said.

Earlier in her career, she wrote letters to her family from Europe.

She would describe a war-torn continent, cities turned into ruins and

characters who would sell you just about anything from the black market

but for a price.

Makishima calls her mother a “pioneer” who was ahead of her time.

“And she inspired many young people to write,” she said. “And she had

a great sense of humor.”

Barbara Kreibich is survived by her two children and four

grandchildren.

A private memorial will be held Friday.