Video: Carol Barkin puts history into perspective
By Kevin Coughlin
Carol Barkin spends a lot of time in graveyards, bringing names on tombstones to life.
But on Thursday, she recited a name that brought her new life:
Aubrey Claudius Galloway.
“He was a big part of my year,” Barkin, a master of understatement, said while accepting an award for a decade of service with the Morris County Tourism Bureau.
Galloway is the surgeon who removed a lemon-sized tumor from Barkin’s heart in March.
“Now that I’m feeling better, I do not take any day for granted, and try to aim high and make each day count. Since each day is a lease on life, I want everything I do to be worthwhile,” Barkin said after the ceremony at the Frelinghuysen Arboretum in Morris Township.
The Tourism Bureau’s 17th annual membership meeting was an upbeat affair that included recognition for the Historic Chester Business Association and Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11th Dist.), the bureau’s honorary chairman. Morris Freeholder Director Kathy DeFillippo represented the congressman. Stanley Alexandrowicz, classical guitarist from the Baroque Orchestra of New Jersey, performed.
Tourism was a $2 billion industry in Morris County last year, and the region’s hotel taxes contributed $9.5 million to state coffers, said Leslie Bensley, executive director for the bureau.
Barkin was cited as a big reason for this success. As tourism outreach manager, she writes grants, tinkers with the tourism website, sends e-blasts, produces music for July Fourth fireworks shows and even judges picnic contests for Morris Arts, according to Patricia Sanftner of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
“Challenges don’t scare her,” Sanftner said.
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In addition to helping implement a county wayfinding project with 41 signs and kiosks, Barkin has played key roles in such programs as Mansions In May, Be Our Guest, Revolutionary Times, the Morristown Festival on the Green, New Jersey’s 350th anniversary, and a 2010 gala for the late historian John Cunningham.
“And I can’t think of anyone I would rather cavort in a cemetery with,” added Sanftner, a partner in Barkin’s popular walking tours of Revolution-era graveyards.
HIJACKED HISTORY
Local history has a strong hold on Barkin. She can’t pass an old lime kiln or ice house without asking: What happened here? Why is it important?
“I try and pick out the oddest things. If I think it’s interesting, I hope other people will, too. There’s nothing like providing people with clues to our past,” said the Morris Township resident, who has an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh.
Family vacations inevitably include historical sites… where Barkin “hijacks the tour,” joked Perry Bell, one of her two sons.
Promoting history is more like a way of life than a job, Barkin said. “It feels worthwhile. I bet I get more out of it than I give.”
Bensley described her friend and colleague as “understated but brilliant,” a fan of the Beatles and Breaking Bad who fractures the tourism office in Morristown with her droll sense of humor.
Barkin flashed that humor on Thursday, whipping out a thank you list that unfolded, accordion-style, to the floor.
While praising Sanftner, her tour partner, as a “local treasure,” Barkin confessed:
“When you lay down on those tombstones, it kind of freaks me out.”
Bensley said the tourism bureau’s longest day was Barkin’s surgery. Thankfully, “it turned out fine in the end, and she’s bounced back with a remarkable sense of purpose.”
Barkin put it another way.
“Ever feel like you are sleepwalking through life? I never feel that way anymore.”
We all owe Carol a debt of gratitude for helping to keep history alive in Morris County.