Extraordinary alums in profile
RICHARD BARRY (BS ’56) AND MARY JO COLLINS BARRY (BS ’55)
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| Richard Barry (BS ’56) and Mary Jo Collins Barry (BS ’55) in front of Holy Family Church, where they recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. |
HIS OCCUPATION: Principal owner of Public Communications Inc., for 36 years, Dick recently began a succession plan in which he remains a senior public relations consultant, serving a few longtime clients. “I’ve been here every day since my official ‘retirement’; I very much enjoy hearing the creak of the ‘L’ outside my window and the invigorating sights and sounds of the city,” he says.
HER OCCUPATION: She’s been a PR director for the Chicago League of Women Voters and the Beverly Art Center, a private non-profit center in the Barrys’ Chicago neighborhood; a volunteer communications specialist for the Beverly Area Planning Association; and director of PR for the Washington and Jane Smith Home, a non-profit retirement community in Beverly.
MORE LOYOLA CONNECTIONS: Dick was Loyola’s director of public relations from 1958-66, and was president of the Alumni Association in 1992, the same year he received a Founders’ Day award.
NEWSHOUNDS: The Barrys met in the newsroom of the Loyola News, precursor of the Phoenix, where Mary Jo was the paper’s first female associate editor (and the first Loyola woman inducted into the Beta Pi honorary journalism fraternity) and Dick was a reporter. “Dick wandered in in his ROTC uniform and introduced himself,” recalls Mary Jo, who says the paper was their “home away from home; we developed close friendships we still have today.” During college, she also was a copy girl at the Chicago Tribune .“I knew Dick’s dad, Tribune writer and editor Howard Barry (BS ’26), before I met Dick.” After Mary Jo graduated, Dick was Loyola News editor his senior year.
HOT (OFF THE PRESS) DATE: One of the Barrys’ first “dates” was a Loyola News field trip to the Loyola University Press on Ashland Avenue. Quickly sizing up romance potential between the two, the press’s linotype operator put their first names together on a lead slug and pointed out that it, too, was “red hot.” The two were married shortly after Dick’s graduation.
PARISH TIES: They’re volunteer PR coordinators for Holy Family Parish on Chicago’s Near West Side, celebrating its 150th anniversary this year. The parish, where Mary Jo’s great-grandparents and the next two generations of Collinses lived, was founded in 1857 by Arnold Damen, S.J., who also founded Loyola’s predecessor, St. Ignatius College. “We still have an opportunity to tell the Loyola story,” says Dick. The Barry family played a major role in rescuing the historic church from demolition, and contributed the church’s new altar in 2003. In February, the Barrys celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary Mass at Holy Family.
FAMILY INVOLVEMENT: Three of their four children—Peter, Ellyn, Susan (BA ’85, MEd ’94), and Erin—and their families live within two blocks of the Barrys in Beverly, and the fourth is a few miles away in Oak Lawn, IL, so “Mary Jo devotes considerable time to our expanding family,” says Dick. The Barry clan numbers 15 grandchildren.
TRACING ROOTS: Mary Jo enjoys doing genealogy on the many branches of the family. Her research has been the impetus for several trips to Ireland and Germany, where she’s pursued leads from libraries to town halls.
ADVICE FOR TODAY’S STUDENTS: “With a liberal arts education, you can go anywhere you want,” says Mary Jo. “Enjoy this time, savor it, but be serious about it, because you can prepare yourself for so much by listening and observing,” says Dick. | GAIL MANSFIELD