IN MEMORIAM: James L. Barre ’67
The Rev. James Lyman Barre, Class of 1967, died peacefully on March 7, 2023 at the age of 87, in hospice care in Wilmington, North Carolina, just days after being diagnosed with lung cancer. He was surrounded by his beloved wife Carol, and his children.
He was predeceased by his son, Michael Ernest Allen Barre to cancer just three months ago, December 8, 2022.
Barre was born in Brattleboro, Vermont to Ernest V. Barre and Gladys E. Barre on July 19, 1935. He married Susan Hebb on December 20, 1956, and together they had three children: Gabriel, Greta, and Michael. He graduated from the University of Vermont in 1964, before attending General and receiving his Masters in Divinity in 1967. He then returned to Vermont where he was rector at Saint Mark’s in Newport, and assistant to the Dean at Saint Paul’s Cathedral in Burlington. A few years later he also assisted at Christ Church in Montpelier. He and Susan were divorced in 1972 and in April 1973 he married Carol A. Harman at the Sage Chapel of Northfield School in East Northfield, Massachusetts. He went on to work with the state of Vermont, retiring as Deputy Director of Medicaid in 1988. In retirement, he and Carol adventured around the country in a series of motor homes and spent about eight years alternating between living in the Florida Keys as well as …in their “southern home” of Surf City, North Carolina. There they and Carol’s mother Eleonora (“Pat”) Harman had designed, built and maintained a home on the beach that weathered many hurricanes. In September of 2003, he began a clinical pastoral education program at New Hanover Medical Center and upon graduation, became part of the Chaplaincy program there for two years.
Barre will be remembered as a masterful and dramatic preacher, an extremely learned and profoundly philosophical man, voracious reader, proud father, and caring husband, and will be deeply missed.
He is survived by his wife, Carol A. Barre; his son, James Gabriel Barre and his wife, Tricia Paoluccio; his daughter, Greta Louise Barre; his first wife, Hallie Susan Hebb; and many grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and extended family.
According to Mrs. Barre, “In my experience Jim was, at his core a priest and GTS was a crucial step in making that manifest. Of particular importance were his spiritual directors Eric Freidus and Dora Chaplin. From his application in 2001 to the Clinical Pastoral Education course of study here at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington (NC), I quote: “[Dora] taught me that being quiet in the presence of God was one of the things I most needed to learn. She also gave me a variety of methods of encouraging that state of spirit. Chief of these was the realization of the fact that to be in the presence of God does not involve “going” anywhere, but simply being as aware as possible of where and when and what I am. Fr. Thornton taught me that just because prayer is physically or spiritually difficult, it doesn’t mean that I’m doing something wrong.”
It is expected that his cremated remains will be buried in his family plot next to his parents and his brother Steve, in Brattleboro, Vermont in a small service later this year.
From an obituary posted online on March 09, 2023 and published in Wilmington Star-News.