Robert Thurman Barnard, of Lexington, retired opinion page editor at the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky and former president of the National Conference of Editor Writers, died Thursday, March 30, 2006 at the age of 79.
He died at Kendal at Lexington's Borden Center after being treated for prostate cancer.
Barnard retired in 1990 after 27 years at the Courier-Journal, 17 of them as editor of the editorial page.
He served as president of the NCEW in 1979 and head the association's annual conference in Phoenix, Arizona that year. He was the first president of the NCEW Foundation, which supports NCEW programs including an annual Minority Writers Seminar for opinion writers at newspapers and radio and television stations, the Masthead quarterly publication, and seminars for college students and foreign travel.
During NCEW trips to China, the Soviet Union and the Mideast in the early 1980s, he met with leaders including Deng Xiaoping and Yasser Arafat.
Barnard attended more than 25 NCEW national conventions. The organization's executive board elected him as a life member in 1986.
He was a founding member of the First Amendment Congress, a coalition of 20 national journalism and communications organizations that sponsored national, state and local congresses on media and First Amendment topics from 1979 through 1997.
He was president of the Louisville chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists in 1978-79. He was a member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and a Pulitzer Prize juror, and he frequently served as a discussion leader at the American Press Institute.
Barnard joined the Courier-Journal in 1963 as an associate editor in 1970 and became editorial page editor in 1971. He was named associate editor of the newspaper's daily Forum page in 1988.
He began his journalism career in 1949 as a reporter at the Raleigh (North Carolina) Times. He later worked at the Winston-Salem (North Carolina) Journal, including a stint as Washington corespondent in 1958, and the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times.
Barnard was born in Wayne, Pennsylvania on August 2, 1926 to Thurman L. and Elizabeth Shackleton Barnard. He grew up in Gross Pointe Farms, Michigan and graduated from Scarsdale (New York) High School in 1944. He was an electronic technician in the Navy from 1944 to 1946. In 1949, he graduated cum laude, with a major in English and a minor in chemistry from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
He and his first wife, Ann, were married for 49 years until her death in 1999.
He married Clara Belle Weatherman in Lexington in 2001.
Barnard was an avid traveler. He toured Machu Picchu in Peru and Angkor Wat in Cambodia, went on a three-week safari in east Africa and visited many other places in Asia, Europe, Australia and the Americas.
A longtime tennis and chess player, he had taken up bridge again in recent years. He was a member of the United Way board in Lexington.
Survivors include his wife; a son and daughter-in-law, Scott and Eileen Barnard of Ellicott City, MD; a daughter and son-in-law, Robin and Tom Moskal of Ellicott City, MD; a son, Kevin Barnard of Tampa, FL; a stepdaughter, Bess Weatherman of Brooklyn, NY; a stepson, John Weatherman of Marietta, GA; and stepdaughter and stepson-in-law, Kate and Jeb Brown of Washington, DC; a sister, Sally Fox of Washington, DC; four grandchildren: Emily and Camille Barnard, Christopher Moskal and Daniel Barnard; and three stepgrandchildren: Gracie and Julian Watrous, and Audrey Tyler.
A memorial service will be held at a later date. Donations may be made to the Rockbridge Area Hospice, P. O. Box 948, Lexington, Va 24450 or the R. E. Lee Memorial Episcopal Church, 123 W. Washington Street, Lexington, VA 24450.
Arrangements are being handled by the Harrison Funeral Home & Crematory, Lexington.
