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Erie Hall of Fame: The first 5 inductees
Erie Hall of Fame: The first
5 inductees
By EMILY BABAY emily.babay@timesnews.com
Some of the most prominent figures from Erie's history are still receiving
accolades.
The inaugural class of the Erie Hall of Fame was announced Friday, awarding
places to five notable figures.
A governing board of eight narrowed down nearly 80 nominations to the final
five, whose names were announced Friday at the Boom on the Bay celebration at
Liberty Park.
Board Vice Chairman John Vanco, executive director of the Erie Art Museum, said
he was pleased by their variety.
"There are people who are historical and people who are much more recent," he
said. "It's a nice balance."
Nominations for next year's class will be accepted this winter.
The five who topped the list this year are:
Dr. Gertrude Barber
(1911-2000)
Gertrude Barber lived at the forefront of her field.
She founded what is now the Barber National Institute in the early 1950s to help
disabled children receive education and support -- an idea many at that time
opposed.
"She dreamed dreams that, at that era, were not thinkable," said Maureen
Barber-Carey, the executive vice president of the institute and Gertrude
Barber's niece.
Today, the institute provides services from preschool to job training.
Throughout Barber's career, she "was never satisfied with the status quo," said
Erie City Councilman Joe Schember. His 22-year-old daughter, Jodi, who has Down
syndrome and is autistic, has been involved in programs at the institute for
most of her life.
He said Barber was ahead of her field in devoting resources to autism, now a
chief focus of the institute.
"She was definitely in the forefront of the nation in recognizing that there's
something going on here that we need to address," Schember said.
Barber's motivation came from years as an Erie School District administrator
telling parents of disabled children that their children had no place in school,
Barber-Carey said. "She shuddered every time she had to do that."
 Col.
John Boyd (1927-1997)
For Erie native John Boyd, an early career as an Air Force pilot led to greater
renown as a military strategist.
Boyd entered the Air Force during World War II with a love of flying. He later
fought in the Korean War. But he is best-known for developing the strategy
credited with winning the 1990-91 Gulf War.
That theory, the OODA Loop -- which stands for "observe, orient, decide, act" --
is aimed at making good decisions faster than the opponent.
While Boyd's daughter, Mary Ellen Boyd, who lives in Virginia, said her father's
experience in war helped him as a strategist, she is heartened that his theories
have applications beyond the battlefield.
The OODA Loop, for example, is often cited as a strategy in business, law and
sports.
"I like that it isn't just about death and destruction," Mary Ellen Boyd said.
"His work applies all over the place."
She cited her father's ability to "hyperfocus" as a factor in his success.
He would study at home, Mary Ellen Boyd said, and nothing else occurring in the
house would bother him.
"He just focused," she said.
Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949)
Harry T. Burleigh's fame came as a church singer in New York City -- but that
recognition came after he had already established himself as a top musician in
Erie.
 Burleigh
is best known for his position as a longtime soloist at St. George's Episcopal
Church in New York and for his arrangements of spirituals, which helped to
popularize the genre.
But before those later-life achievements, he made a name for himself in Erie by
performing all over the city and was often cited in newspapers as a top singer,
said Jean Snyder, who has organized Burleigh events at Edinboro University of
Pennsylvania and is working to republish some of Burleigh's art songs and choral
works.
His music career "didn't start when he went to New York," she said.
Unlike many black Americans who wanted to ignore reminders of slavery, Burleigh
valued spirituals, which originated as slave songs. He thought they could help
the rest of the country respect black music and culture, Snyder said, noting
that Burleigh became known as a talented musician even in an era of widespread
discrimination.
"Burleigh's life went from success to success at the same time people were being
lynched and Jim Crow (segregation) was moving farther north," she said.
 Capt.
Daniel Dobbins (1776-1856)
Daniel Dobbins, by any account, knew Lake Erie and the land around it. That
knowledge was instrumental in his success building the fleet here that won the
Battle of Lake Erie in 1813.
That battle, said Walter Rybka, senior captain of the U.S. Brig Niagara, ensured
that the War of 1812 ended with the United States regaining the Michigan
territories that it had lost earlier in the war.
And it was Dobbins -- who spent his entire life in Erie -- who convinced the
Navy that the town was the best place to build a powerful fleet.
"Dobbins made it known that it was possible and advisable" to build a major
fleet in Erie, Rybka said.
The decision to build on the bay was a "brilliant idea" because the British
weren't able to easily charge in with gunships, said David Frew, a professor
emeritus at Gannon University and former executive director of the Erie County
Historical Society.
Erie's population skyrocketed as a result of the shipbuilding industry, Frew
said, with the town rapidly growing from a few hundred residents to 1,000 --
making it not much smaller than Buffalo and Cleveland.
 Dr.
Paul A. Siple (1908-1968)
Antarctic explorer Paul Siple wanted to learn about everything.
On his first trip to Antarctica, as a 19-year-old Boy Scout accompanying Cmdr.
Richard Byrd's 1928-31 exploration, Siple fell in love with a place that let him
study many fields of science, said Siple's daughter, Jane DeWitt, who lives in
Maine.
From physics to biology to geology, "there were so many different opportunities,
and he was just curious about so many things," DeWitt said.
Siple, who grew up in Erie, returned to the Antarctic five more times. He helped
establish the first permanent human base and modern research station there in
the late 1950s.
"When he came to the Antarctic, not even its outline was complete on the map,
and when he left it, the exploration was almost finished," read an obituary in
the September 1969 issue of the Geographic Journal.
Siple became an expert on polar logistics and adapting to life in cold areas,
developing cold-weather gear and methods of Antarctic exploration. He also
developed the wind-chill factor.
DeWitt said her father was a hard worker -- and someone she seldom saw just sit
and relax.
"His wheels were always cranking," she said.
EMILY BABAY can be reached at 870-1686 or by e-mail.
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