E. Bartlett Barnes, former Bristol Press publisher, dies at 96 By STEVE COLLINS and JACKIE MAJERUS , The Bristol Press 02/10/2004 BRISTOL -- Former Bristol Press Publisher E. Bartlett Barnes, a champion of open government and a journalistic role model, died at home Monday afternoon at the age of 96. For more than half a century, Barnes played a role in nearly every significant community endeavor in Bristol, from museums to industrial parks. "Bart was a guy that in my mind was almost synonymous with the town. He was part of its fabric. Every place you turned, every good deed that was done, he was part of it," said Thomas Kennedy, president of Bristol Hospital. Barnes has long been "just an absolute icon of what a newspaper publisher, a public citizen and a public servant ought to be," said Mitchell Pearlman, executive director of the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission. Friends and community leaders said they were sad to hear of Barnes’ death. "It hits me like a ton of bricks," former Mayor Stretch Norton said. Barnes led the newspaper from his father’s death in 1956 until its sale in 1985. But he also served at the helm, at various times, of the Board of Education, the Library Board, the Bristol Boys Club, the Barnes Nature Center, the Bristol Industrial Development Board and much more. "Almost everything you can think of, Bart was there," said his longtime friend, Elmer Madsen. "There’s nobody I can think of who influenced Bristol as much as Bart." "What he wasn’t involved in wasn’t important," said Donald Selina, the former general manager of the Press. Barnes tended to work behind the scenes, but his views were hardly a secret since the Press published editorials nearly every day that he almost always supported. "He supported the community in many different ways," former Mayor John Leone said. Whatever was going on, he said, "Bart was there, was a part of it, and had the insight to push for projects that were important to the community." Most of what Barnes wanted, he got. But he didn’t quite win every battle. The Route 72 highway extension through Bristol, which Barnes sought for years, never happened. "That was probably his greatest disappointment," Selina said. Journalism Barnes grew up at the paper, where his father was publisher. Selina said he can remember Barnes, as a teenager, playing his violin for the newsboys who’d come in to pick up their stacks of papers to deliver after school. Barnes graduated from Bristol High School in 1924, spent a year at the Connecticut Agricultural College and then went on to graduate from Yale University a few months before the Crash of 1929. He worked for eight years at the Stamford Advocate as a reporter and advertising salesman, where he met and married Alice Cook of Stamford in 1933. Barnes returned to The Bristol Press in 1937 to sell advertising. He moved up the ranks to become business manager and general manager for his father. When Arthur Barnes died in 1956, Clarkson and Bart Barnes were named co-publishers, which remained the case until Clarkson retired in 1968, leaving his younger brother as publisher and president of the company. "He ran a good newspaper and he ran it the old-fashioned way," said Norton. "Anybody who knew him called him Bart," Press Community Editor Maureen Hamel said. People phoning the paper asking for Edward Barnes or Mr. Barnes, she said, were clearly strangers. For Barnes, the paper was always first and foremost about news. "He wanted to make enough money to support a good, vibrant newsroom," said Selina, who worked with Barnes for 43 years. Selina said that Barnes cared about advertising and other areas of the paper, but his main purpose as a publisher was to make sure he had a good newsroom. Jim Thompson, a Press reporter and wire editor during the 1960s, said Barnes was "kind of a father figure. He kept us all in line. ..He was the captain who drove the ship, the rock we all depended on." "The Press was his baby," Thompson said. Hamel said he kept the building immaculate and loved to throw parties for the newspaper staff. He held annual luncheons for retirees, Selina said. Barnes "put together a hell of a staff at The Bristol Press at one point," said Bob Brown, a former editor. "I was part of that staff, I’m not sure I was the strongest part, but I was proud to be there," Brown said. When former Press Publisher Joseph Zerbey IV came for a job interview in 1969, Barnes told him he was trying to arrange some housing for the young advertising salesman. He showed him a photograph of a shack in the woods and asked Zerbey what he thought of it. Zerbey said he told Barnes he didn’t care where he lived, he just wanted a job. With a wink and a smile, Barnes told Zerbey he was "our kind of guy." Zerbey, who is president of Newspaper Agency Corp. in Utah, said Barnes taught him "the responsibility a publisher has in the community." "Bart was like a father to me. He was more than a mentor. He taught me most of what I know about this business," said Zerbey, who oversees two Salt Lake City newspapers. Zerbey said Barnes was "full of great stories" and "great wisdom." Even after Barnes reluctantly sold the paper, his influence lingered. "Meeting Bart Barnes is one of the best things that ever happened to me," said Frank Keegan, editor from 1987 to 1994. "He had profound influence over me through the strength of his character, his integrity, his intelligence and his commitment to the tenets of good journalism." "He was a great champion of the people’s right to know and a newspaper’s duty to tell them, good news or bad," said Keegan, who is editor of The Connecticut Post. Zerbey said Barnes believed that a newspaper was only as good as its community. That’s why Barnes poured so much into making Bristol better, he said. "He spent a lot of his energy and a lot of his money making Bristol a better place," said Zerbey. "Unfortunately, in today’s newspaper world, there aren’t too many Bart Barnes’." The Flood of ’55 During the great flood of 1955,he managed to get to the Press office on Main Street despite the rising waters all around, Barnes told teen journalists for The Tattoo a few years ago. Though he wasn’t a reporter, Barnes took the opportunity to get the big story. He said he gathered up as much information as he could about the situation in town, but couldn’t file it to the Associated Press or anywhere because the paper’s telephone lines were down. Barnes said he wound up wading through a waist-high torrent flowing between the newspaper and the Southern New England Telephone building next door so he could send the story off to the AP office in Boston. Wet and tired, Barnes said, he managed to get through and dictate the story to a wire service reporter, who typed it up and sent it all over the world. Barnes said it was his biggest journalistic achievement. But it didn’t quite go right, he said. Through some glitch with the AP, his brother Clarkson got the byline on his story. Open government Pearlman said that Barnes, who was instrumental in pushing for open government laws in Connecticut, was "one of a very small group of publishers and senior editors" who started pushing for sunshine statutes in the state in 1955. It wasn’t until 1975 that the Freedom of Information law was finally on the books, he said, and from the start Barnes was a strong ally of the commission and its mission. "There is no stronger supporter of the public’s right to know than Bart," Pearlman said. Former Gov. William O’Neill tapped Barnes to serve as an FOI commissioner from 1985 to 1989. In an online history of the panel, Pearlman said that Barnes "had an avuncular style and a ready smile that hid a ‘steel trap’ mind and a toughness that showed itself only when necessary, as it sometimes was during commission hearings." Pearlman called Barnes "a workhorse commissioner" who did more than his fair share because he was driven by the desire to help people understand the workings of their government. The commission named its highest award for service in the cause of open and accountable government the "E. Bartlett Barnes Freedom of Information Award." Yale "Nobody was a bigger booster of Yale than Bart," Brown said. "He loved the place. He was one of those guys who bled Bulldog blue." Barnes loved Yale, Norton said, and was always on top of "anything that pertained to Yale." For many years, Barnes wrote the notes for his class and others in the alumni magazine. Along with Bert Nelson, a 1933 graduate, Barnes formed the Bristol Yale Club half a century ago to help students from his hometown pay the tab at Yale. The club has assisted dozens of students over the years and still has more than $500,000 in the bank to help more in the future. The Main Street Community Foundation also has a scholarship named for Barnes that assists local graduating high school students who plan to study journalism in college. Civic leader Brown said that Barnes was a philanthropist "who gave religiously every year" to a variety of community organizations. Barnes helped found the American Clock and Watch Museum, the Environmental Learning Centers of Connecticut and the New England Carousel Museum. "Bart was a grand old man," said Chris Bailey, curator of the clock museum. Barnes was the last survivor among the 10 founders who worked with clockmaker Edward Ingraham to start the museum in 1952. "Bart was our connection to the 50-year history of the museum," said Don Muller, its director. He said Barnes was generous with his "time, talent and treasure." Carolyn Thompson, director of The Family Center, said Barnes was "an amazing supporter" of the club. He was a life trustee and his late wife, Alice, was a board president. Friend Elmer Madsen said that "when I would do something stupid" like buying land for a nature preserve on Shrub Road, Barnes would help out. "He was always there," Madsen said. Barnes remained active with the nature preserve, said Jon Guglietta, its director. He said Barnes worked behind the scenes in public land acquisition, including the Hoppers-Birge Pond Nature Preserve, Sessions Woods and Nelson’s Field. "I can’t think of one person in the community who has done a greater job than Bart has done bringing environmental land conservation to Bristol," Guglietta said. Kennedy said Barnes was "something bordering on Mr. Rotary" because of his long involvement with the Rotary Club. "This guy was a cheerleader and could pump up people" decades younger, he said. Library Director Francine Petosa said that Barnes was an active library commissioner for about eight years in the 1990s. "He had the best interests of the community at heart. I think people saw that and reacted to that," she said. Getting others involved "He was very community-minded. He wanted everyone to be a member of something," said Hamel. "I had to be a member of the Bristol Woman’s Club and go to all their lunches." Madsen said that Barnes "was always getting me into things," including leadership roles in conservation groups. "He was always sitting in the background pushing me into something," Madsen said. Selina said that he wound up in charge of the Red Cross in town and only realized later that Barnes must have quietly pulled strings to put him in the position. "He knew what routes to take. He had the contacts," Selina said. Politics Barnes was a Republican, but not blindly. Selina said that Barnes was "a compassionate liberal" and "he hated Richard Nixon with a passion." "In local politics, everybody came to see him," Selina said. Leone said that when he first started thinking of getting into politics two decades ago, one of the first people he met with was Barnes because he "a great deal of respect and admiration" for him. "I picked his brain because he certainly knew a lot about how things came to be the way they are in Bristol," Leone said, and played a key role in more things than anyone can remember today. Personal side "Bart was no wallflower," said Madsen, a close friend for several decades. He said that Barnes loved to play tennis, walk in the woods, cross-country ski, eat out, take in operas and much, much more. "He was always so vigorous," Brown said. E. Bartlett Barnes Jr. said his father kept active throughout his life and continued skiing and playing tennis into his 90s. His son said that Bart Barnes remained in good health until about 18 months ago when he had heart surgery. "He had a very good life," his son said. Madsen said Barnes "always had a book" in hand -- usually a biography "or some historic thing" -- right up until his last days. Though Barnes was a big man about town, his son said, at home he played second fiddle to his wife Alice. "He did not run the household," his son said. "He was allowed to take out the trash. She ran all the important things." Zerbey said Barnes was proud of his children and grandchildren and "very devoted" to his wife, who died in 1998. "They were very, very close," Zerbey said. Barnes said his father used to signal his mother when he arrived home by knocking on the door and ringing the bell before entering the house so she would know it was him. "He kept doing it long after she died," his son said. "He missed my mom an awful lot." Epilogue When a dinner was held a few years ago to honor Barnes, he told a crowd of friends and family that he’d enjoyed every minute. "Thank you all and carry on," he said at the end of the night. "That’s the theme for all of us: carry on." The funeral is at 11 a.m. Friday at the First Congregational Church. No decision had been as of late Monday about calling hours. The family asked that contributions be sent to the Bristol Yale Club in lieu of flowers. ©The Bristol Press 2004 E. Bartlett Barnes is a direct descendant of Thomas Barnes (1615-1688) of Hartford, CT. Be the first person to voice your opinion on this story! Back to top