By Don Erwin
Many fine articles have been published about George Barber’s life and accomplishments.
I would like to add a personal perspective.
I first met George about 1997 when I visited the Barber Museum in downtown Birmingham, where Trim Tab is now located. From the outside, it looked like an old warehouse, but inside, it was 40,000 sq. ft. of motorsports wonder. I later took a German business prospect to the museum, and after ten minutes, he took out his phone and cancelled his appointments in Atlanta later that day.
As an economic developer, I helped George with the new Barber Museum & Park. A few years later, I went to work for him.
George financed almost all the construction of the nonprofit Barber Museum & Park—many tens of millions of dollars—but it wasn’t easy. We struggled doing a deal with the City of Birmingham, to get the proper zoning, and environmentalists thought we would destroy the Cahaba River. “I’ve never worked so hard to give away so much money,” George would periodically say.
The environmental opposition hurt George, since he was such an ardent environmentalist. When Forever Wild was first created, it required a vote of the people. Millions of Barber’s Dairy milk cartons urged citizens to vote for it. George was also instrumental in the formation of the Nature Conservancy in Alabama.
George envisioned a beautiful park that just happened to have a road racing track flowing through it. It would have thousands of flowers, large grassy areas, and no grandstands. The finished park showed that technology and nature could coexist side-by-side.
About the time we were doing the Barber Park, Birmingham was debating whether to build a domed stadium. “I don’t know how you feel about a domed stadium,” George said, “but it would just put us in competition with the two dozen or so cities that already have them. I want to do something for Birmingham where we won’t have much competition.” Before the Barber Park opened in January 2003, we had landed Porsche‘s largest driving school in the world.
In 2009, we invited the Indycar organization to conduct a free Spring practice at the Barber Park, and they were so impressed that we’ve hosted an Indycar race every year since (except for covid).
At some point, George said, “It’s too late to have the best auto museum in the world. There are so many good ones. But it might be possible to have the largest and best motorcycle museum in the world.” In 2014, the Guiness World Records organization certified the Barber Museum as the world’s largest motorcycle museum.
George was born in Birmingham, lived most of his life in Birmingham, and built the Barber Museum & Park in Birmingham. He lived on top of Red Mountain, and his house looked directly down on 20th Street. He was a huge UAB fan. “From up here, I can see who’s making things happen. I just look for the construction cranes, and most of them are at UAB.” George contributed millions to UAB for endowed chairs.
When the Barber management team went out for lunch—usually a meat and three—George typically wouldn’t drink iced tea. He thought it was overpriced. He wouldn’t buy the 904 Porsche he had driven to 2nd in class and 7th overall at Daytona in 1965 because it had gotten so expensive. Yet outside my office door, hanging on the wall, was a priceless gigantic glass flower by artist Dale Chihuly, and George spent millions of dollars on motorcycles and autos he thought were good value.
Growing up, my children got tired of hearing, “If George Barber can turn off the lights when he leaves the room then you can, too.”
George led by example. If he was showing someone the museum and park and saw a cigarette butt or a scrap of litter on the ground, he would lean over, pick it up, and palm it until he found a trash receptacle. Employees and fans noticed. After large events at the Barber Park, fans leave the grounds typically almost spotless.
George loved a good joke. Driving an Auburn official on a tour of the Barber Park, George said “It’s worked out well here, except we’ve had this huge bug problem.”
“Oh, we can get someone from the university to help you with that,” said the Auburn official. And then he saw the giant spider and ant sculptures, and George just smiled.
George loved having schoolchildren visit the Barber Museum. Occasionally, I would speak to a group and would ask them, “George Barber can drive any car in the world he wants, so what do you think he drives?”
“A Cadillac—a Lamborghini—a Ferrari,” they would say.
“No, he drives a Honda minivan,” I would say, and they would look at me blankly. I would explain, “Mr. Barber doesn’t let other people tell him what’s cool. He decides that for himself.”
At one point, Alabama had specialty auto tags, but no specialty motorcycle tags. We wanted a Barber Museum motorcycle tag, so we had a bill drafted for the next legislative session.
“Do you have a preference for a lobbyist,” I asked him. “Yes,” he said. “You.”
He thought it was easier for me to learn to be a lobbyist than to teach a lobbyist what they needed to know about the Barber Museum & Park. And he was right.
George never married and had no children, but he chose people for his companies and the Barber Museum & Park who shared his visions. They are some of the most competent people I’ve ever known. I am confident they will take the companies, the museum, and the park far into the future.
I retired in 2020 when I was 65. I wanted to write and publish a novel, and I couldn’t do that working for Barber, since I sometimes acted as a spokesperson. After retirement, we kept in regular contact.
Last year, George asked me how things were going, and I told him I was working on a second novel, but it was a struggle. “Just keep working,” he said.
A few weeks later, I received a package in the mail. It was a framed photo of George standing in the infield of the Barber Park beside one of his full-sized buffalo sculptures, reading my first novel, Buffalo Hunting in Alabama.
That’s the George Barber I knew. I will greatly miss him.
Don Erwin was an economic developer for twelve years and worked for Barber Companies for almost eighteen years. He is the author of Buffalo Hunting in Alabama, a novel about the competition among cities and states to attract economic development projects. He lives in the Birmingham metro.
Other columns written by Don Erwin you might enjoy:
David Sher is the founder and publisher of ComebackTown. He’s past Chairman of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce (BBA), Operation New Birmingham (REV Birmingham), and the City Action Partnership (CAP).
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