Pat Barr Views
Born in Akola, India, Patrick Barr went from stage to screen with The Merry Men of Sherwood (1932). He spent the 1930s playing various beneficent authority figures and reliable friend types. As a conscientious objector during the Second World War, Barr helped people in the Blitz in London's East End before serving with the Friends Ambulance Unit in Africa. There he met his wife Anne Jean Williams, marrying her after ten days; it would have been sooner, but they had to get permission from London. They stayed together ever afterwards.
My friend Pat Barr died this summer at the age of 52. I am writing about her a mere nine weeks after our last conversation. Her death is too recent.mdash;her absence too starkomdash;for me to write about her as if she were a character from history, or someone whose telephone number I don't know by heart. Nor can I write easily, cheerfully, as if she were alive.
Born on August 26, 1950, Pat was the first-born of Marie and Stephen Barr. The oldest of three children, Pat graduated from Bennington College in 1971. Never one to do as everyone else does, Pat became a self-taught lawyer, clerking for other lawyers in Vermont, taking the bar exam"3.7234
In 1979, seventeen days before turning 30, Pat married Rolf Sternberg, and together they built a law practice in Bennington mdash;now known as Barr, Sternberg, Moss, Lawrence, Silver a Saltonstall, PC. They raised a family: Shira, born in 1982, (Shira Arielymdash;the song of the lion mdash;because girls need big voices) and Tava, born in 1986, (Tava Yaelnmdash;good mountain goat
Pat Barr Images
