Obituary - Ken Barry, courtly and calm

He was one of the smoothest deadline writers in the newsroom. He showed us you don’t have to have your hair on fire to handle hot stories.

“Just by watching him, I learned how to deal most effectively with reporters who were flustered or in a hurry on deadline,” Dave Gregorio, one of the veteran New York deskers, said in a posting on https://www.akmacagnafuneralhome.com/guestbook/kenneth-barry. He did it “with calmness and kindness! Even when Ken was annoyed, it was hard to tell.”

We hadn’t heard from him lately. Not since his wife of 29 years, Sheila Mullan, also a journalist, passed away last September after a long struggle with cancer. They were the opposites who attracted --- she outgoing and extroverted, he reserved and cerebral and 12 years older. No matter, they clearly admired each other. They were a matched set. She was active in journalism organizations and kind of a socialite. Ken always was her distinguished escort.

Everyone who worked with him knew his reputation as a skilled journalism pro. But he never bragged or really ever even talked about himself. He got around more than most of us realized. He worked for the Baron in Hong Kong, Washington, New York and, who knew, Hawaii.

I knew he went to college at Columbia and his economic chops were so solid I always assumed he had a degree from the elite New York university known for turning out Nobels in the dismal science. But his Masters was in English, at genteel University of Virginia. Nor did I know his father was a top editor at the Florida Times Leader in Jacksonville, where he grew up. Before he succumbed to the family affliction he taught high school English in Winchester, Virginia, a small city in the Shenandoah Valley.

His easy and kind demeanor could have made him seem a rube when he came to fast-talking New York. But he was never boring. He was conversant in literature, music of all kinds, art, French wines and film, and sophisticated in his tastes. He was urbane and courtly, and a steadying presence always.

Randall Mikkelsen, a retired veteran of US and European bureaus, said he was lucky to meet him when he started in Washington as “a young reporter just a year off the Midwestern prairie”. Ken was a connector and never shy about reaching out to newbies or top dogs, a sage presence with his trimmed white beard. “He put me at ease amid the flurry and importance of the bureau’s atmosphere,” Mikkelsen said.  With his easy professionalism and unflappability “he helped define a bureau and company culture whose memory I treasure to this day”.

When I assigned stories to Ken over a span that included two market crashes, the 911 attacks and a string of financial scandals, he always landed it ready to go out to the “subs” – as we called subscribers. No sub-editor needed. While he was a desker much of his career, he was a reporter in Washington, whose authoritative stories played well in the hinterlands; when we counted “impacts” we found he was one of Reuters’ most-used bylines when it came to the Fed and the economy, and later, in New York, the stock market.

Long-time editor Dan Grebler remembers how easy it was taking dictation from Ken when he phoned in complex economic matters when they broke from Washington. “When his updates and wrap-ups landed, they were pristine. If I had questions or suggestions for the edit, he was the consummate professional.”

That’s all I should say about Ken, or I might run afoul of one of his arch putdowns delivered with a soft chuckle that Gregorio remembers: “1,200 words, and every one a gem." 

Sorry if my recollection is not as silky and succinct as his stories were.

Ken was a gem. A desker in the wry. A classic Reuters guy. He’ll be missed. ■