 The future Rev Dr Whittemore came into this world in 1947 in Norfolk, Virginia. There he led a quiet childhood, which ought to be everyone’s birthright. His mother gave him a love of her native Blue Ridge Mountains, but died when he was thirteen. His father, an entrepreneur and mechanic, operated a service station for forty years. After high school Barry attended VPI, aka Virginia Tech, for five quarters before flunking out. He then enlisted into the US Army Security Agency for four years where he trained and worked as a Hungarian linguist. He took his discharge in Europe and worked and travelled for another two. Returning home, he finished college and began doing construction work. Not fast enough to making a living at carpentry, he settled on becoming a college professor and entered an MS program at Radford University in History and Community College Education. He later pursued and eventually earned the Doctor of Arts, specializing in Appalachian History, at Carnegie Mellon. He taught full time at the late Southern Seminary College in Buena Vista until he was laid off right before it became “the late.” In the mid-nineties, while writing, adjuncting, and lay preaching, the UU congregation in Blacksburg, Virginia urged him into Divinity School. He earned an MDiv from Duke and served an internship at Eno River UUF in Durham, North Carolina, one of our flagship large congregations. In 1999 he was ordained by the Holston Valley UU Church in upper east Tennessee. He served as settled minister there for six years before becoming a consulting minister at Outlaw’s Bridge Universalist Church in down east North Carolina. In 2008 he accepted an interim minister position in Birmingham, Alabama. For the past two years he has been “riding circuit” and since January teaching part time at NGCSU. Besides maintaining a lively interest, personally as well as professionally, in History and Religion, Barry is as happy outdoors as in. He likes to walk and hike and hopes to get his recreational kayak wet. He enjoys supporting minor league baseball and will tell you that stock car racing enabled him to aspire to higher education. His most preferred pastime is Old Time Southern Dance and Music. A fair square dancer, he can’t play worth a darn. Sometime before the end of July he and his two cats (Blackie and Patches, 11 year old sisters) will move into a lovely house at the end of a road only ten minutes from his work sites. Teaching, preaching, mountains, some free time, banjos, interesting people, satisfying work – life is good. |