The Woonsocket, R.I., native moved to Overbrook to teach English and speech at Rosemont College for five years, then spent another 25 years as a professor at Peirce College. She became such a Philadelphian that she forsook the Boston Red Sox for the Phillies.

"My mother just loved her Phillies," said her son, Dr. Andrew Curtin, yesterday, after the memorial Mass at St. Norbert's Church in Paoli.

"Her favorite was Pat Burrell. I mean, two years ago, nobody liked Pat Burrell - except my mom.

"She kept saying, 'Have you noticed what a nice guy he is?' I guess it took a mom to notice what a nice guy Pat the Bat was at a time when everybody was ready to run him out of town."

Curtin said that when his mother lived in a hospice during the final stages of her illness, "my younger brother decorated her room with a Phillies blanket and a Jimmy Rollins poster.

"My mom loved J-Roll as much as she loved Pat the Bat. She loved the Phillies during all their sad sack years, too. She adopted them like she adopted kids."

The woman her friends called "Barb" and her nine grandchildren called "Gran" had six children. She raised two other kids simply because they were in crisis and she had room in her heart and in her bustling home for them.

"My brother Bob was adopted when I was a baby and he was 10," Curtin said. "He had a club foot that had to be operated on. My mom met him, thought 'this kid needs me,' and adopted him. That's the way she was. She never explained herself. When the spirit moved her to do something, she just did it."

Barbara's husband, John T. Curtin, an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia when the couple married on Thanksgiving Day in 1953, saw the rougher side of urban life and occasionally delivered one of its victims to his wife's compassionate care.

"One kid, whose father murdered his mother, stayed with us for two years," Curtin recalled. "I remember my brother Bob asking me one day, 'Who's that kid at dinner every night? He's been here for a couple of months.'

"I said, 'Yeah, Bob, that's Ronnie. He lives here.'" Curtin laughed. "I'm telling you," he said, "we had a busy home."

Barbara also maintained an equally lively Endless Mountains summer home for 25 years in Eagles Mere, Pa.

She named it "Clanhaven" and loved hiking the centuries-old nature trails there every summer with her children and, later, her grandchildren.

"We have so many pictures of 'Gran' at Indian Rock or on the Laurel Path with her adoring grandchildren," Curtin wrote in an obituary remembrance for family and friends.

"Sad to finally leave her mountain haven when she could no longer walk its trails . . . ," he wrote, "she said she always wanted to keep those precious memories in her heart; and this is where she remains for all of us who knew and loved her."

Curtin said that his deeply religious mother was an activist during the years of Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council, seeking to bring a spirit of "let's open a window and let in some fresh air" to Catholic worship.

"I remember coming home from football practice at Our Lady of Lourdes School in Overbrook" he said, "and there was a priest in our living room saying Mass and there was someone playing a guitar. My mom really resonated with that era."

M. Barbara Curtin is survived by her husband; her children, Claire Keefe, Andrew, Mary E., Philip, and Robert; and 8 grandchildren.

She was preceded in death by a son, Thomas, in 1997, and a grandson, Matthew.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in her memory to Bryn Mawr Rehab Hospital, 414 Paoli Pike, Malvern, Pa. 19355. *