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1990—Carl |
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| We’d do lunch, now and then, or take a drive through the countryside. When we walked together—slowly, and never very far—he’d lean as heavily on my arm as his diminished frame allowed, and I’d occasionally remark on the curious dissonance in our roles: while depending on me in some ways like one of my little children, he was also in a sense the big brother I’d never had. |
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One evening, I brought Carl a videotape of a PBS broadcast entitled “Day One,” which dramatized the Manhattan Project leading up through Trinity. Can’t recall whether that was at Fairlawn in Lexington or at Bear Hill in Wakefield. He was fairly low that day but perked up at one point to inquire with a chuckle, “Is that pretty lady supposed to be Lise Meitner?”
In the spring of 1990, Carl abruptly fired the doctors, hired a retired British naval officer as companion and attendant, and moved to a rented house on the beach in Fort Myers, Florida, where he died on Armistice Day. His family buried him in Utah. |
Lise Meitner |
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The MIT physics department held a memorial service for Professor Emeritus Walter Carlyle Barber on Tuesday, December 18, 1990, at 3pm in the MIT Chapel. Katie asked me to be the final speaker and, in particular, to close my remarks and the meeting with prayer. “I want somebody to pray for my husband’s soul,” said she, “and if you don’t do it, nobody’s going to.”
So there I stood, addressing a wildly mixed group including Carl’s family members, fellow “Mormons” with whom he’d recently closed various circles, and numbers (if not hosts) of our hosts from the MIT physics faculty. Including elderly incarnations of some of my teachers who had been young and struggling when we had last met and, in some cases, struggled. With an assignment to lead in prayer an assembly whose individual positions on religion ranged, to my certain knowledge, about as widely as one could possibly imagine. |
The MIT Chapel |
Those who spoke talked a lot about Carl’s patience with students, his quirky sense of humor, his total lack of swagger, his perceptiveness in one-on-one interactions, and his lively problem-solving intellect. I don’t think the word “alcohol” was uttered, but it overhung everything. More than one speaker said, in one oblique way or another, that it was a puzzle and a sorrow that Carl, who tilted so successfully against the intellectual dragons in his chosen field of research, was somehow unable to conquer his own devouring worm. One expects to encounter regret and a sense of loss in a memorial |
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