With Barbara Vickers’ death on Sept. 10, we inherit the rather wide path she cut in Sedona since her arrival in 1979.

Nonprofits and service organizations benefitted from her assistance in one way or another, thanks to her legacy, the Sedona Wish List, a website and regular weekly column in the Sedona Red Rock News, wherein nonprofits could share their needs and ask for help and resources from the public and each other.

Doing civic good had its roots in Barbara’s early management of the Foothills office. It was there that she germinated the idea that folks would want to live here if they knew how they could make a difference in the community.

It wasn’t until later in retirement that she answered their question, “What is it like to live here in a tourist town?” by creating the Sedona Wish List, for which she was awarded Philanthropist of the Year by the Sedona Community Foundation in 2016.

In January 2021 Barbara was recognized for her decade-long accomplishment in founding and sustaining the Sedona Wish List.

Sedona Wish List grew from a handful of founding member organizations in 2010, with Steve Brown’s help in creating its complex website, which was adapted to the later 100 service organizations it came to represent under my direction since 2014.

All these years a weekly column has appeared in the Sedona Red Rock News to meet the needs of its regis­tered nonprofits and services, thanks to early and ongoing support from now-Managing Editor Christopher Fox Graham.

Barbara’s legacy is carried forward, thanks to the Sedona Public Library, which continues the work of Sedona Wish List as an aspect of its strategic commitment to community involvement.

Barbara’s past is festooned with a variety of accomplishments. She was a maverick in all she set out to do; she put herself through college by establishing a thriving antiques business which traded in brass beds. She appears on the cover of Woodworking Magazine in a field which was then dominated by men. Her sculpted “art car” which traveled across the country must have been quite a sight before art cars were a “thing,” but it ushered in her development of a new form of light weight, organic abstract sculpture.

Barbara had entered another creative milieu with her late husband, Philip Vickers. Vickers became an accomplished metal sculptor after leading a storied life as a World War II fighter pilot, described in a book about him that Barbara edited. She was instrumental in raising stepsons Christopher John Vickers and Stephen Philip Vickers.

In 1988 and 1989, Barbara received her own private pilot certificate and instrument qualification, and founded the Sedona Red Rockettes, the local chapter of The 99s International Organization of Women Pilots. She was fond of recalling the surprise on the faces of a mostly male audience when a female 99s pilot took the podium for the main address at a gathering of pilots in India.

Barbara raced in the 1996 National Air Race Classic, placing seventh out of more than 50; and was the first woman to receive the Civil Air Patrol Squadron 205’s Pilot of the Year Award.

In 1998 Barbara founded and was first chairwoman of the Sedona Airport Support Association. With help from the Sedona 99s, Barbara started Sedona Airport Day — which will be celebrated this year on Saturday, Oct. 1, as the free annual event called Wings & Wheels on the Mesa.

Barbara Vickers’ Day was proclaimed by city of Sedona and the Sedona Airport on Sept. 22, 2007. Barbara also put Sedona on the map for families from throughout the Verde Valley to celebrate Halloween in the shops lining Uptown.

Barbara shared an avid interest in philanthropy and the creative arts with her devoted second husband, photographer and writer Jerry Buley, Ph.D., a retired professor from Arizona State University.

Rocky Point, Mexico, became a permanent seasonal beachside residence through the years, a place of many fond memories and long-standing relationships. Barbara forged an enduring relationship in Mexico with one family in particular who will much miss her.

Cristina Rendon Trujillo was 9 years old when she first looked up to Barbara, who from then on, took an active interest in developing her accomplishments in making jewelry, entrepre­neurship and civic leader­ship. Barbara adopted the family to follow: Trujilo’s sculptor husband Enrique Avilez, and their children Baruc Avilez Rendon and Philip Avilez Rendon — named for Philip Vickers.

Sedona artist Marilyn Winebarger has been Barbara’s longest local confidante and friend.

Winebarger and I will be the first to admit that Barbara made the world a better place in all she attempted. She will be missed and remembered by civic leaders in Sedona and by us all, since we have all benefitted at least a little from her having passed this way.

Barbara died quietly in the night on Sept. 10, and is survived by Jerry Buley and stepsons Christopher and Stephen Vickers.

By Astara Fisher, special to Larson Newspapers.