Allan Barker: A memorable colleague

Very sad news about Allan Barker. I had the privilege of working with him for several years in the Manhattan newsroom in the 80s/early 90s. He was an inimitable fellow indeed, a memorable colleague, and a grand journalist. 

A couple of favorite stories about the man: 

My daughter Fiona, who was about four at the time, was with me in the office one day when I had just popped in to finish something up. I think it was a Saturday, so there was a slim crew. I had bought Fiona a packet of M ’n' Ms candy to keep her busy while I worked, but I kept an eye on her as she wandered about the newsroom and talked to people, who were very kind and gentle with her. I heard her offering people candy from her bag. As she walked up to Barker and interrupted his pounding on the keyboard, I feared for a moment that this tough editor would yell at her.

"Would you like a M ’n' M, mister?" she asked him.

He glowered. 

"Yes!!! I'll have six," he said.

Fiona frowned and responded: "You'll have ONE." 

Then she carefully extracted one from the bag and handed it to him.

Barker was charmed with the taste of his own medicine from this little thing. Ever afterwards, he made a practice of asking me how Fiona was doing every time he saw me. Last time we communicated, by email, I told him she was now a lawyer. He said he was not surprised.

Another time, Allan was hovering over me as I was writing something. He took issue with some phrasing I had done and suggested another way of doing it. I acceded.

Later, when the copy went out over the wire and he was reading it back, he asked me why I had changed my initial writing.

"You told me to do that, Allan," I said.

He yelled at me: "You're supposed to be a senior editor. You shouldn't do things just because I told you to."

Barker was hard on one particular copy clerk, ordering this, that and the other and generally running him ragged.

"Doesn't it upset you the way Sarge treats you?" I asked the young man - who was of Turkish ancestry.

"No," he said. "He's Australian. So I just think about Gallipoli."

RIP Allan. Thanks for the memories. ■