Value family and make good decisions

By Madeline Lathrop
| Contributor

After a century of life, Frank Thomas Barber can say with a smile what he is most proud of: surviving.

Barber was born in Rochester on December 23, 1924 and grew up in the Edgerton/Maplewood neighborhood. His childhood was anything but easy.

When he was just five years old, his father Joseph died and Frank’s mother Mary was left to raise Barber and his two younger brothers Joseph and Arthur alone. She faced the enormous challenges of unemployment and single parenthood.

“The city threatened to take us away from her because she didn’t have a job,” Barber remembers. “She was a very vivacious Italian, which really helped her because she fought to keep us together.”

To make ends meet, his mother took on housecleaning jobs in the neighborhood and rented out the upper floor of her house to tenants. Meanwhile, Frank Barber often took on the role of caretaker for his younger brothers while their mother worked.

“I didn’t know it, but I was taking on the role of a father,” he remembers.

The Barber family was also discriminated against as the only Italian family in the neighborhood at the time. The boys were often mocked and insulted by some of the other children. However, not all interactions were negative; Some neighbors accepted their cultural differences.

“Some of the children we played with were not Italian and would always come to our house when my mother was cooking spaghetti,” says Barber. “They enjoyed that because they didn’t have that at home.”

When Barber graduated from John Marshall High School, he was drafted into the Navy, where he trained as an aircraft builder. He was then stationed in Pensacola, Florida.

“We worked in huge hangars, repairing planes, reassembling them and adding new skin, wings and fuselage,” Barber remembers.

Frank enjoyed his time in the military, but was still happy to return home after the end of World War II.

Back in Rochester, he found work at Taylor Instrument Co. Although his time there was short and the work small, it proved life-changing – it was there that Barber met Mary Palumbo, the woman who would become his wife three years later.

While the couple started their family, Barber began working as a lab technician at Kodak. Over time, he worked his way up the management ranks and eventually, at the suggestion of a friend, moved to a better-paying position in the workshop.

After a few years he decided to do something different.

“I told my boss I was leaving, and he said, ‘What can you do?'” Barber recalls. “I said, ‘I can do other things. I’m going to school – I’ll show you.'”

He enrolled at the Rochester Institute of Technology and was initially interested in advertising. However, as this course was not yet available at the time, he somewhat reluctantly enrolled in an art course instead. He later learned that the famous painter Ralph Avery would be his teacher.

“I respected him because of his work,” Barber says. “And I thought, ‘Holy smokes, I’m here with Ralph Avery – are you kidding me!'”

Barber credits Avery with teaching him how to draw. He remembers the teacher telling him, “When you throw a punch, be positive and don’t do anything stupid.”

After graduating, Barber applied for another job at Kodak, this time as a technical illustrator.

He remembers the supervisors saying, “Gosh, Frank, I heard you got a new job. Where do you think you’re going?’ But he carried on, fitting in quite well and enjoying the experience.

Barber made friends there, including Walter Cooper, Kodak’s first black chemist and a major contributor to the civil rights movement in Rochester. Barber’s meticulous craftsmanship won Cooper’s trust when preparing important slides for presentations.

When Kodak began to decline, Frank eventually retired and opened an Orange Julius franchise with his son-in-law at the Marketplace Mall in Henrietta in the early 1990s. Soon the whole family was working together, and that, Barber says, was his favorite part of his Orange Julius experience.

Reflecting on his life, Barber is honest: “I’m one of those people who went through life like everyone else, but I was able to live to be 100 years old. I had a good mother and a good wife, and I have a good son, daughter and grandchildren who mean a lot to me. Everything else is just a number or a date.”

His advice to others is simple: “Make good choices in your life. You can either make good ones or bad ones. Always do the good and to hell with the bad.”

This year, Monroe County Executive Adam Bello declared December 23, 2024, Frank Thomas Barber Day in Monroe County and encouraged all residents to join in celebrating this extraordinary milestone and honor the remarkable life of a man who left an indelible mark Community.