Julia Barkley

Mary Barkley Brown is the youngest of five children and only daughter born to Dayton and Julia Barkley. Mary displayed several of Julia’s paintings at the meeting and the following books: “Gifts of the Gazebo, The Memoirs of Julia Graham Barkley” by Julia Barkley with Claudia Vierling; “Music in the Big Woods” by Julia Barkley; “Stars in Your Bones, Emerging Signposts on Our Spiritual Journeys” by Alla Bozarth, Julia Barkley and Terri Hawthorne. Mary also displayed several catalogs from Julia’s art shows.

Julia Caroline (Graham) Barkley was born May 26, 1924, on a farm near Colome, South Dakota, to Sandy and Gertrude (Smalley) Graham. The farm was lost during the dust bowl of the Great Depression and the family moved to the town of Colome where Julia’s mother ran a hotel and her father worked at a dry goods store. They lived in the hotel. When Julia was eight, the family moved to Hot Springs at the southern end of the Black Hills, where Julia’s father worked for the Veterans Administration. The family was very poor. Julia’s mother baked goods, and Julia sold them on the street. There were four daughters in the family: Julia, Jeanette (died young), Mary and Elizabeth. Julia was a good student and loved to read and write poetry. She participated in band (trombone), chorus, string orchestra (cello), plays, operetta, speech and National Honor Society. She also worked at the library in Hot Springs and at a soda fountain.

Julia received a music scholarship to Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell, South Dakota, and enrolled as a “composition major.” She studied piano and organ, along with trombone and cello. As a freshman at Wesleyan , Julia met Dayton Barkley (1922-1978). He was a junior and a “handsome football and basketball hero.” Dayton courted her at the Corn Palace where they danced to Lawrence Welk. Dayton was in the naval reserves and due to be called to active duty. They married in March of 1943. After spring semester they returned to Hot Springs. Julia worked at an ammunition plant in Igloo, South Dakota, and Dayton reported to naval duty in Pensacola, Florida. Later Julia and baby Dayton Ray joined him in Pensacola, where Dayton spent the rest of WWII in charge of physical education and keeping the pilots in shape.

When the war was over, Dayton continued his education at the University of Minnesota as a phy-ed major. After graduation, they moved to Askov, Minnesota, where Dayton taught in high school for three years. He was also the principal, basketball coach and driver’s education instructor. In the summertime Dayton worked as a salesman, and he was a very good salesman. He earned more in three months in the summer than he did in nine months of teaching. So after three years, he decided he didn’t want to teach anymore. In 1948 the family moved to Annandale where Dayton took a job running a boys’ camp on Lake Sylvia, while he considered his alternatives. Dayton also tried growing crops on some of the land at Lake Sylvia Ranch.

Dayton’s Furniture Store (1950-1997)

The owner of the camp was in the furniture business in Minneapolis, and he suggested that Dayton start a furniture store in Annandale. Dayton farmed and ran the furniture store. He said he would continue in whichever business was most profitable at the end of the year. The farm netted $28. At that time the family lived in the caretaker’s house at Lake Sylvia Ranch.

Julia wrote in her memoirs, “We decided whatever made more money at the end of the year—the farming enterprise or the furniture store – that’s what we’d pursue. Dayton would get up and farm until two o’clock in the afternoon, while I took the kids to town with me to run the furniture store and sell our pitiful inventory. Late in the afternoon, he would take our little pickup and deliver whatever I’d sold, and then go to Minneapolis and stock up for the next day. We were literally selling hand to mouth.”

Dayton and Julia started the furniture store in the empty Case Implement building near the railroad tracks (near the former Peery’s Grocery Store) with $2,000 savings. At first they sold mainly kitchen appliances and sold and delivered bottled gas. Bill Roth was their first employee. Dayton moved the business uptown to the oldest building in Annandale, the 1887 Buri Hardware. A marine dealership was started in their former building.

Dayton put an Ironrite mangle in the window of the store. To get people interested in the mangle, Julia did her ironing in the window. Dayton even ironed shirts in the window. After attending a Frigidaire convention, Dayton had a new idea. At the time the family lived in an old house near the park with a poor kitchen. Dayton’s idea was to build a new kitchen in the window of the store, Julia could cook there, and the family could eat in the window. Julia didn’t go along with that idea.

Julia had a knack for interior decorating and assisted customers with their purchases. Mary said there was a crib in the store and she was practically raised there. All the children -- Dayton Ray, Blaine, Dean, and Mary -- grew up in the furniture store, and when they were older they came after school to help. Sadly, baby Bruce (1956-1957) lived only six months.

Dayton’s Furniture Store sold a full-line of furniture, carpeting, and custom draperies, and was also an Ethan Allen dealership. The store had 14,000 sq. ft. on two floors stocked with everything needed to furnish a home. Coordinated room arrangements with accessories made it fun to browse. A gift shop with a balcony and spiral stairs to the basement was added using space from the building next door. Julia and Blaine also had an antique shop in the basement of the store for a number of years.

After Dayton’s death in 1978, Julia, Blaine and Mary continued Dayton’s Furniture Store for another 19 years until December 1997. The building was sold to an antique dealer and is now Grandpa Earl’s Country Store and Gallery.

Town Club Cafe

Gilbert and Helen Andrews’ Town Club Cafe was for sale in 1957, and Dayton bought it. He didn’t want anyone to start a competing furniture store in that space. He asked Julia to make a big pot roast every morning to serve for lunch. The Barkley sons were bus boys and kitchen help. For several years in the mid-1950s, the Barkleys tried to run two full-time businesses on two sides of the street. It was a happy day for Julia when the restaurant was sold. The building is now occupied by Russell’s Bar.

Julia Returned to College (1950-1974)

In 1950 Julia enrolled at the University of Minnesota to get an interior design degree. Dayton had told everyone that she was an interior designer, and she joked that she wanted to make an honest man of him. An art class was a requirement, and the only one open was “painting.” Julia said that the first brush stroke was like magic. It transformed everything for her. She was about 50 years old when she started painting. Julia worked at the furniture store full-time while attending college. In 1974, after 24 years of night school classes, Julia obtained a double degree in Interior Design and Studio Art. Nearly all the children had graduated from college by then. The entire family, Dayton and Julia, Dayton Ray, Blaine, Dean and Mary, earned their degrees from the University of Minnesota.

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church of Corinna Township

Julia was a member of the board at historic St. Mark’s. She was the organist 1950-2001. The church had no central heat and held services only in the summer. St. Mark’s Episcopal Church was built 1871-1872 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Octavius Longworth came to Corinna Township in 1859. Services were held at his home before he donated the land and built the church with the help of Rev. Knickerbocker. The Longworth’s land at Clearwater Lake became Longworth Resort, followed by Tuelle’s Resort and Beecher’s Resort, and has been Camp Friendship since 1964. St. Mark’s Church was dedicated and consecrated by Bishop Henry Whipple (1822-1901), who in 1859 became the first Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota. Mary said she was substitute organist for her mother when she couldn’t be there.

Annandale Improvement Club

Julia served as an officer of the Annandale Improvement Club and was president 1960-61. She helped initiate events held to raise money for the library including sales of cookbooks, wreaths, and aprons. Flower sales were held on the sidewalk in front of Dayton’s Furniture Store 1959-1978 using flowers from Julia’s and other Improvement Club members’ gardens.

To earn funds for the new Annandale Library, Julia was involved in an “art crawl” where 12 homes and studios were opened to the public. A tour fee was charged and artists contributed money from proceeds of any art sales to the library.

Pioneer Park

Julia was a founding member of Pioneer Park in 1972 and served as an officer. She was active in Pioneer Park for over 30 years. Julia and son, Blaine, purchased John Powers’ blacksmith shop and started an antique shop. They donated the contents of the blacksmith shop to Pioneer Park. When the building couldn’t be successfully moved to Pioneer Park, a structure was built to house the blacksmith shop equipment. Powers purchased an existing blacksmith shop east of the Thayer Hotel in 1920. The land is now part of the Thayer Hotel property.

The Annandale Hotel

The Charles Hotel (1888) and the Pleasant Lake House were the first hotels in Annandale on the Soo line. After the Charles Hotel burned down, Albert Thayer built the Thayer Hotel in 1895. The Thayer Hotel, with porches on three-stories, was the only hotel to survive. In 1976 Thayer Hotel was vacant and in need of repair. In 1978 Julia, who served on Annandale’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority, and Annandale Mayor Wally Houle, got the hotel placed on the National Registry of Historic Places in order to save it. The city of Annandale purchased it for $40,000. Because a buyer couldn’t be found for the hotel, some city officials felt their only alternative was to destroy the building. Julia started a group called the Annandale Hotel Preservationists, Inc. After a six-year fight to save the hotel from demolition, then former mayor Wally Houle, with the help of investors, purchased and restored the hotel. The newly renovated hotel opened in 1985. Sharon Gammell purchased it in 1993. The hotel is now her home and Thayer’s Historic Bed and Breakfast with eleven guestrooms and is still a landmark on Highway 55.

Julia’s Garden

Julia and Dayton were both avid gardeners in the backyard of their neat, white house with black shutters. Their beautiful backyard with the white gazebo was a gathering place for family and friends. The gazebo is special because the materials were purchased with a small inheritance from Julia's mother. Parties, receptions, political gatherings, poetry readings, Mary and Sheldon’s wedding, baptisms, and Dayton’s funeral were held there.

Elderhostel in the Black Hills – (1980-1995)

When Julia lived in South Dakota, she didn’t really appreciate the beauty of the area. After Dayton died in 1978, Julia decided to build an eight-sided dome vacation house in the Black Hills. It is 550 miles, a full day’s travel, from Annandale to the dome house. Julia’s dome house was approved for Elderhostel classes in 1980 and continued for fifteen years. Julia took six to eight weeks off from the furniture store in the summertime to run the Elderhostel program. The dome house became “Barkley Art Center,” located six miles southeast of Custer with the national forest on one side and Custer State Park on the other. Julia’s longtime friend and fellow artist, Elizabeth “Betty” Hood Anderson, taught watercolor there. Students painted the beautiful scenery of the Black Hills and Native American models in native dress Mary asked Betty to tell about some of her memories. Women from Annandale, including artist, Ada Dawson, and others from all over country traveled to the dome house for classes in art and Indian spirituality. Betty Anderson said it was very peaceful there with a bubbling creek and whistling pines.

Julia’s Art

Mary sometimes went with Julia to her art classes on the West Bank. Julia’s large paintings were crammed into her small car. One day, after the instructor had harsh criticism for Julia’s painting, she returned feeling very frustrated. The black and white striped awning on Dayton’s Furniture Store was being replaced. Julia cut a hunk off and tacked it to the w all of the garage. To vent her frustration, she started throwing paint at the canvas. Julia wrote in her memoirs, “However, as soon as I saw the impact of thrown paint on the canvas, I became aware of a real energy – a transfer of energy that shows visually. I became so intrigued with the energy transfer process that I forgot to be angry any longer. And I started throwing paint in a controlled manner. I used big brushes and little brushes; I used no brushes; I used sticks; I used large sticks and small sticks, depending on the kind of stroke that resulted when I threw the paint against the surface.”

Julia participated in dozens of one woman and group exhibitions. Her first show was “Ragtime on Canvas,” which included 16 paintings using the thrown paint technique. In a quote from the “Ragtime” catalog Julia Barkley said, “Music is in my head. I hear the ragtime music and feel the beat of the jazz rhythms as I throw paint. The result is a crackling energy and sizzling vitality which reflect and capture the essence of music on canvas.” “The Great Mother” Show in 1980, a series of paintings on aluminum and canvas, depicted the forces of nature as female. “The ‘Circle of Fire’ Show was a requiem for the 9 million women who on any pretext were burned at the stake as witches in the Middle Ages in Europe.” The “Starry Night” paintings stemmed from an astronomy class Julia took from Dr. Kaufmanis at the University of Minnesota, which added a whole new dimension to her concept of God and intelligent creation of the universe. The United Theological Seminary purchased ten of the thirteen paintings from the “Energy of Miracles” Show, which are now part of their permanent collection.

Julia painted what she called her hyper-color series which is about the beauty of the earth. Julia said, “I look at a landscape and see color, but then intensify the color to reflect the excitement felt when I look at the landscape.” Julia painted the splendid colors of the Black Hills and New Mexico landscapes.

Julia continued painting almost every day starting at 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. until her hands didn’t work anymore and she could no longer paint. The ALS Society assisted with accommodations to allow her to paint as long as possible.

Julia wrote the following poem about her creativity

I let go!

I dance!

I am alive!

I possess myself!

I sing my own melody!

I dance my own movements!

I write my own words!

I paint my own colors!

I play my own rhythms!

I express it!

I choose it!

I give birth!

Clare’s Well

Julia was involved with Clare’s Well Spirituality Farm and Retreat Center for 16 years. Clare’s Well was started by Franciscan Sisters on a 40-acre farm in French Lake Township in June 1988. In 1989 Julia became a member of the Visioning Circle of Clare’s Well, a sort of board of directors. She was also part of a circle of women with common interests and concerns (spirituality, nature, ecology) that met bi-monthly. She traveled with Sister Aggie Soenneker and Sister Carol Schmit to Assisi and throughout Europe, and visited the homes of both St. Francis and St. Clare. Julia painted several paintings for Clare’s Well.

Julia Barkley (1924-2005)

Julia was a board member of the Initiative Foundation of Annandale. She helped established the first Red Hat Society in Annandale. She was part of a bridge group that met twice a month for 40 years. She was a gourmet cook and accomplished gardener. Julia was appointed to the Governor’s Residence Council during Gov. Jesse Ventura’s tenure. Julia had many talents and did everything well. She had a positive attitude and was enthusiastic and energetic.

Julia Barkley died at age 81on November 22, 2005, after a long struggle against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. An Annandale Advocate article stated: “Friends remembered Julia Barkley last week as an artist who lived to paint, a crusader who wasn’t afraid to stick her neck out and a woman who was deeply involved in the community and world around her.”

Annandale History Club Secretary

Julia Barkley: a woman of many talents

Annandale Advocate, 11.29.2005: By Chuck Sterling

Friends remembered Julia Barkley last week as an artist who lived to paint, a crusader who wasn’t afraid to stick her neck out and a woman who was deeply involved in the community and world around her.
   Barkley, 81, an Annandale resident for more than 50 years, died Tuesday, Nov. 22, at the Benedictine Health Care Center in Minneapolis after a long struggle against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Barkley and her husband, Dayton, raised four children and owned and operated Dayton’s Furniture Store from 1949 until his death in 1978.
   Her longtime friends recalled how Barkley became a late-blooming painter, helped save the Thayer Hotel from demolition, was a founding member of Minnesota Pioneer Park, worked with the Annandale Improvement Club to beautify the city, became involved in spirituality groups at Clare’s Well, established the Red Hat Society here and protested the Iraq War.  “She loved life and she lived to paint,” said Elizabeth Hood Anderson, Barkley’s close friend and painting companion for 30 years.
   Barkley was the furniture store’s interior designer but didn’t receive her interior design degree until 1974 after many years of classes at the University of Minnesota.  At one point she was required to take a painting class, though she had no interest in it, Anderson said.  “It opened a whole new world for her,” she said.   “When she got into the class she just came alive and she said it was the most liberating experience of her life.”  Barkley started out painting very abstract works, at one point pouring car enamel onto large aluminum sheets.   “She got some gorgeous effects from that,” Anderson said, but the paint was toxic and she stopped using it.  She later used oil paints, and her latest works were watercolors.  Besides being shown around Minnesota, Barkley’s colorful paintings have been displayed in New York, Chicago, Santa Fe, N.M., and Japan, where one on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was exhibited in the Tokyo Fine Arts Museum and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Garden Hall.
   For many years, Barkley returned to her native South Dakota each summer for about a week to teach painting classes to older adults, Anderson said.  The location was what Barkley called her “dome home,” an eight-sided house in Custer, S.D., which she enlarged to accommodate student boarders.
   Barkley painted up until a year before her death, Anderson said, and she was celebrating life in her colorful last works.   Some of them are on display at the Snooty Fox gallery in Annandale.  “I dearly loved her,” Anderson said. “I’m going to miss her terribly. She’s a remarkable woman. She really was.”
   Friend of 60 years  Mildred Shadduck, wife of the late Nobel Shadduck, said she knew Barkley for nearly 60 years.   Both women and their families were close, she said.  Shadduck credited Barkley with saving the Thayer, built in 1895, from the wrecking ball in the early 1980s.   “She had a big battle about that and she did save it.”  Barkley was good at that kind of thing, she said.  “If there was something she believed in, she didn’t mind sticking her neck out about it.”
   Longtime Barkley friends Jeanne Roth and Marilyn Gordon added that Barkley headed up a hotel preservation group, which got the building placed on the national register of historic places and obtained an injunction forbidding the city from tearing it down. Roth was also a member of the group.  The hotel is now known as Thayer’s Historic Bed ’n Breakfast.
   Barkley, her son Blaine and Nobel Shadduck were founding members of Minnesota Pioneer Park when it was established in 1972.  Julia Barkley remained active in the park and was on the board of directors at the time of her death, former park president Gordon said.   It was while serving on the board that the two became good friends, she said.  As late as last spring Gordon visited Barkley’s home to give her an update on the park “because she was interested in what was going on out there.”
Gordon pointed out that Barkley established the Red Hat Society, a social group for older women, in Annandale about five years ago.  She described her as “always gracious and involved in everything and a fighter.”
   Shadduck and Roth told how Barkley and other Annandale Improvement Club members picked flowers from their own gardens and sold them outside the furniture store on Saturday mornings to raise money for the library and city beautification.  “She was always up for anything that could improve things,” Shadduck said.  “In my estimation she was a great soul. I’m glad her suffering is over.”  When Roth and her husband, Bill, came to town in 1955, Barkley was the first woman she met.  She was one of the first women to work outside the home and she was the first to volunteer for something, Roth said.  “She was proud of her town and she certainly was proud of her family.”
   Barkley belonged to a bridge club that’s been meeting twice a month at members’ homes for 40 years, Roth said. Other members include her, Joan Jorgenson and Betty Freeman.  “We each have to put a quarter in,” Roth laughed.   Jorgenson, who knew Barkley since coming to Annandale in 1962, said she was “a great lady” who had many interests and many friends.  “Whatever she believed in she went at full force,” she said.  “She was a many faceted person.”
   Sister Aggie Soenneker of the Order of St. Francis at Clare’s Well retreat center spoke at Barkley’s funeral in St. John’s Lutheran Church on Saturday, Nov. 26.  Barkley became involved in spirituality groups at Clare’s Well about 18 years ago, she said, suggesting one of Barkley’s missions in life was to help others understand that “we are all one.”  Soenneker said Barkley once wrote: “Everything is connected and related to all that is. There is a basic oneness in the universe, and all events and all things are so interrelated that each one is found in the other.”  In a reference to Barkley’s opposition to war, and her sign-carrying protest against the Iraq War, Soenneker said that’s why division, violence and war were so painful to her.   She knew that “what we do unto others we do unto ourselves.”