Dr. Barbara Ellen Seifert Meyers

Dr Barbara Seifert Meyers, 96, a pediatric dentist, master gardener, gifted but modest musician, devoted wife and beloved mother of three, died November 3, 2023.

Barbara Ellen Seifert was born on July 23, 1927 in Troy, New York. Her family moved to New Jersey and Michigan before ultimately settling in Rockville, Maryland. She grew up in a musical household, singing in improvised three-part harmony with her mother, Charlotte Randall Seifert, and sister Charlotte Louise Seifert as they washed dishes in the evenings. Her father, Harry Emerson Seifert, had been involved in a near-fatal boating accident during his own days at Rensallear Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, NY, so the family avoided swimming, but they took wonderful vacations to the Finger Lakes. She was interested from a young age in becoming a dentist, and worked one summer during high school at the local NIH science laboratory. She graduated from Richard Montgomery High School in 1945, and enrolled the following year at William and Mary College, where she pursued a degree in biology and sang in the choir.

Dr. Meyers was quite calm and resourceful in the face of significant misogyny as she applied to dental programs in the Baltimore area, and ultimately enrolled successfully at Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, Dental School of the University of Maryland, the first dental college in the world. She was the first American-born female to receive her degree from that school. This achievement required a toughness of mind and delicacy of demeanor that are familiar to anyone who has ever met her since. She sewed her own original dental uniforms from a pattern she designed herself, when it became clear that the commercially available ones did not cater to the female figure.

Dr Meyers received her DDS in 1954, the first female graduate of her high school or college to do so. After finishing dental school, Dr. Meyers pursued post-graduate work at Eastman Dental Dispensary in Rochester, New York, and then returned to Maryland to open a pediatric dental practice which she nurtured through referrals from colleagues from dental school who were looking for competent and sympathetic dental care for their children. Meanwhile, she became engaged to Michael C. Meyers, a fellow dental student, who was the dentist at Mount Wilson Tuberculosis Hospital in Pikesville. They married in 1957. In the early years of her marriage, Dr. Meyers commuted from Mount Wilson into Baltimore to maintain her practice, but as the Meyers family grew to two, and then three children, Ellen, Anthony, and Marianne Meyers, Dr. Meyers sold her practice and turned her considerable energies to raising her family. The brood moved to Westminster in 1960, where Dr. Meyers helped found the local YMCA, which existed in the form of aerobic classes long before they acquired a building, and directed the Ascension Episcopal Church choir. She also served as a Eucharistic minster there and contributed to the Carroll County Ministers Association Soup Kitchen. As the children grew up, attended college, and moved away, the Meyers’s travelled extensively to what daughter Ellen would describe as “everywhere they were about to have a revolution,” including Cuba, Turkey, Iran, Jordan, and,just before 9/11, to Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. Dr. Meyers served as a volunteer docent to the Dr. Samuel Harris Dental Museum in Baltimore, the first dental museum in the world. The Meyers’ acquired a vacation home on Tilghman Island, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay, which was hugely enjoyed, especially at New Years, by the whole extended family.

Dr. Meyers was predeceased by Dr. Michael C. Meyers, her husband of 65 years, in 2022, and by her sister, Charlotte, in 2008. She is survived by her daughter, Ellen A Meyers and wife Elena Yatzeck, son Anthony Meyers and wife Carol, daughter Marianne Meyers (who lost her own husband, Hans Dettmar, in 2023), and granddaughter CosimaSandell and her fiancé, Gabriel Branson.

Visitation will be held on Tuesday, November 14, 2023 from 4 - 6 p.m. at Fletcher Funeral & Cremation Services, 254 East Main Street, Westminster. Funeral services will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, November 15, 2023, at Church of the Ascension, in the Stone Church, 23 North Court Street, Westminster, MD 21157. The Revs. Pierre-Henry Buisson and Rev. Ron Fisher will be officiating. Interment will be private.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Dr. Samuel D. Harris National Museum of Dentistry. Donations to the museum can be made online at support.dentalmuseum.com or checks can be mailed to:

National Museum of Dentistry

31 S. Greene St.

Baltimore, MD 21201

If you send a check, please put

"in honor of Dr. Barbara Seifert Meyers” in the memo line so that the gifts can be properly attributed.