Vincent David Barth

Written by David Victor Barth around 1980, based on a short biography and conversations with his father, Vincent, and updated after Vincent's death in 1990.

In a short biographical sketch of himself, Vincent wrote the beginning of a Robert Frost poem, "The Road Not Taken:"

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

and the end of the poem:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
Took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

1910
Vincent was born in King County, Washington, June 10, 1910, 1:25 A.M. at the Denny Renton Clay and Coal Camp near Renton, Washington, with Dr. Jacob Visser in attendance. He fondly noted that Halley's comet appeared in 1835, the year of Mark Twain's birth, and, again, in 1910, the year of his own birth.

On his birth certificate, his father's occupation was listed as "prospector." At that time his father, Victor Barth, was on temporary assignment by his employer to locate coal outcrops. Victor normally drove the electrically powered coal trains out of the mine.

Vincent's mother was Jennie Grace Cool. Her uncle, Sam, was the mine superintendent until he was killed in a mine explosion.

1911
Shortly after Vincent's birth, about 1911, a forest fire forced the closing of the coal mining company. Victor took the family by steamer from Seattle, Washington to Los Angeles, California where he got a job as a clerk in a grocery store.

1913
About 1913 the family moved to Loveland, Colorado, where Victor hauled timber from the foothills to town by horse-drawn wagon and worked in a local sugar beet plant.

1916
The family moved to Denver in 1916. Their first home in Denver was a rental at 4305 Zenobia Street. The bathroom was an outhouse, and Grace cooked on a wood stove. They threw grapefruit rinds into the wood box beside the stove, and Vincent became proficient tossing the rinds over his shoulder into the wood box without looking.

One day Vincent’s mother, Grace, opened a can of salmon to make the family’s lunch. She placed the empty can on the floor for the cat to lick. After a couple of licks, it fell over, dead. Grace threw out the salmon.

1918
Vincent and his two brothers, Donald Scott and Jack Edward and their mother had the severe 1918 flu. Victor did not contract it.

Vincent got his first bicycle, one that had been used by a paperboy. Although the forks were sprung due to the heavy newspaper loads it had carried, it worked and had a carbide lamp.

Vincent read library books, and was especially interested in Dumas' works. He and Donald attended Alcott Elementary School in North Denver.

1922
When Vincent turned 12, his aunt, Ida, Victor's sister took Vincent and Donald, and their cousins, Paul Barth, and Carl Barth, to New Jersey to visit relatives and the Clio Davidson's, longtime friends of the Barth’s. They went by train to New Orleans and then by boat to New York.

1923
In 1923 the family moved to 4500 W. 33rd Avenue in north Denver to a house Victor purchased for $4500. Vincent walked to Skinner Junior High School. He made friends with Carver Ellis and Kenneth Colyar. The boys called themselves "The Three Musketeers."

Vincent and Donald wore second-hand clothes provided by their parent's wealthier friends in California. Vincent was ashamed of his clothes because he and one other boy were the only ones wearing knickers and black stockings in their ninth grade class. To cut expenses, Victor re-soled the boy's shoes, himself.

The family raised chickens and had a garden. The chicken yard later became a dog run for German Shepherds, which the family raised to sell. One dog that they kept as a pet, named Gary, was like a member of the family, and went on most family outings.

On hot evenings, Vincent would grab a blanket and go outside to sleep on the corrugated metal roof of the garage where it was much cooler. Late one night he decided to return to the house. His father, Victor, heard a noise outside, and, not knowing it was Vincent trying to enter, met him at the door with a cocked .45 caliber revolver. Luckily, Victor recognized Vincent before it was too late.

Camping and hunting trips in the summer were great fun for Vincent. Vincent would go jack rabbit hunting on the eastern Colorado plains. After he and Norma had children, Vincent took his family on month-long camping trips around the country.

When he was a teenager, Vincent went on a trip above Silver Plume, Colorado, with a friend, Rayford Scroggin. They found an old pistol in the road that had been run over by passing traffic. Rayford tried repeatedly to shoot a bottle with the old gun, but he couldn’t hit it. Vincent realized the problem was that the barrel was bent, and when it came his turn to shoot, he adjusted his aim to compensate for the bent barrel, and hit the bottle on the first shot. Rayford thought Vincent was an excellent marksman, not realizing that the barrel was bent.

1929
Vincent graduated from Denver's North High School in 1929, receiving a new suit as a graduation present. As he told it, his academic record was undistinguished, although he did graduate in the upper third of his class.

Initially, he had no plans to go to college because his family could not afford to send him. His cousin, Paul Barth, had begun an apprenticeship in the lithographic trade, and Vincent was thinking about some sort of trade for himself until he attended a Hi-Y meeting in Fort Morgan, Colorado, that Spring. One of the topics discussed on this weekend retreat was how one could earn his way through college. Vincent thought this might be a way that he could continue his education.

In the summer of 1929 Vincent got a job with the Denver Tramway as a part- time streetcar conductor and was accepted to the University of Denver. D.U. was often referred to as "tramway tech" because of the number of students who worked on the Trams. The founder of D.U. owned the Denver Tramway, so D.U. students who applied for tramway jobs were considered before anyone else. The students who worked on the street cars were called "trailer hounds" because they normally worked as rush hour conductors on the trailers attached to the motor cars. Vincent earned about 50 cents an hour and worked on the trams when he wasn't in class. Weekend assignments were also possible, and he recalled that many times he stood by on a darkened side track outside of Lakeside Amusement Park waiting for the Saturday night mob to pour out of the park to board the tram he was working on.

There were hazards to the tram job. Vincent related this story: "One Saturday night a 'trailer hound' found his back teeth 'afloat.' There were no men's rooms in the vicinity. Both motor car and trailer cast a yellow light in the vicinity. Power to the trailer was conducted through carbon buttons on the drawbars. The trailer hound was a modest fellow and did not wish to be seen urinating in the open. He stood on the track between the two cars and urinated on the drawbar, short circuiting the power directly to the track, a fatal mistake."

Another story that Vincent related: "We had to wait for an assignment at the car barn. Waiting around led to boredom sometimes, and encouraged bullies to entertain themselves and their hangers-on by subjecting selected victims to indignities. One of Mike Martelli's (a gang leader) favorite tricks was to wait until some victim got an assignment to take a trailer out to be hooked on to a motor car to handle rush hour business. Mike and four or five of his buddies would grab the victim and set him on the drinking fountain, and thoroughly wet his crotch. In such cases the trailer conductor had to stand behind his fare box as much as possible until his pants dried out."

1930
About 1930, Vincent and a fellow student, Harold Burn, decided to take ballroom dancing lessons. Norma Bell, a grade school teacher in Lyons, Colorado, was also taking dancing lessons at the studio. She and Vincent began dating. Since teachers were not allowed to be married, she and Vincent secretly wed in 1937.

In the thirties, Vincent went on a backpacking trip with Pete and Aletha Moser; his parents, Victor and Grace; brother, Jack; and girlfriend, Norma. They hiked to South Colony Lakes at the foot of Crestone Needle, near Westcliffe, Colorado. They slept in an abandoned cabin where a pack rat stole Vincent’s pocket watch. The group tried unsuccessfully to find their way to the summit of Crestone Peak. Their luck fishing was considerably better. Victor shot a trout with his .45 caliber revolver and Pete got one with a rock.

1934
Vincent received a BS in Chemistry from the University of Denver in 1934 at the height of the depression. Following graduation, he spent the rest of the year in a fruitless search for a job. About the job situation in 1934, Vincent wrote, "Graduate engineers became shoe salesmen, men with degrees in botany tried door-to-door book selling, and Math and English majors sometimes found factory jobs. Blue-collar jobs were never more completely filled with formally educated people. Many college graduates ended up in the WPA [Work Projects Administration] or the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corp]."

Two months after graduating, Vincent worked at Hardesty’s sheet metal plant on Larimer Street in Denver, for a few months.

1935
By 1935, Vincent's father was a welding inspector at the Boulder Dam in Nevada, and was able to get Vincent and his brother, Donald, jobs at the Babcock and Wilcox penstock fabrication plant above the canyon wall. The penstocks, up to 20 feet in diameter, feed water to the hydroelectric turbines. Vincent's first job was carrying scrap to the dump. He was soon promoted to floor sweeper, followed by a position as an apprentice welder.

Vincent always enjoyed telling the story about how he was welding inside a penstock pipe, sitting astride a pair of "spiders," star-shaped supports that keep the pipes round while they are being welded. He moved over to one side of the spiders and suddenly the pipes shifted, causing the spider legs to slide past each other like scissors. If he had not moved, his leg would have been sheared off above the knee.

In another incident, a crew he was working with was trying to position a heavy steel plate weighing several tons. It was jacked up on railroad ties and Vincent crawled under the plate to determine what was hanging it up. The foreman didn't notice that someone was under the plate, and he began prying on it with a crowbar. Several of the crew grabbed Vincent's feet and dragged him out just before the plate rolled off the ties.

Once a careless worker passed a heating torch flame across the back of Vincent's head, setting his hair on fire.

On the "graveyard" shift, Vincent wrote that the desert came alive with all kinds of bugs, many of which were attracted to the light of the welding torches. He wrote, "These bugs would land on our coveralls and either crawl down our necks or up our legs. The building was open to the desert on all sides, so it was like the plague of Egyptian locusts. Once these hard-shell bugs started roaming around one's chest, the only way to stop them was to crush them against one's skin, with a smart slap. After eight hours of this, we didn't smell too dainty."

Vincent worked at Boulder Dam for less than a year. His next job was working as a chemist at the American Smelting and Refining Company a few miles northeast of San Francisco, in Selby, California. He worked there from September 1935 to October 1936.

1937
Deciding that more schooling might help him get a better job, he moved to Michigan in the spring of 1937 and enrolled in the University of Michigan, to work on a Master of Science degree. Despite of eating as cheaply as possible and cleaning house for his landlady, Mrs. Murray, to pay for his room, he ran out of money.

He decided to learn fire assaying to earn a living. Vincent moved back to his parent's home in Denver, enrolled in the Colorado School of Mines, and took as many metallurgical courses as he could handle, including fire assaying, general metallurgy, mathematics, and gas and fuel analysis. 1937 was a key year for Vincent. He married Norma Bell on September 4th. At that time she was a teacher in Lyons, Colorado, and in those years, teachers weren't allowed to marry or they would lose their teaching job, so the couple went to Chicago to exchange vows, keeping their marriage a secret from the people at Norma's school. Vincent’s father and Norma’s sister, Ruby, were witnesses at the ceremony. Back in Colorado, Norma and Vincent lived apart and she continued to teach in Lyons for another year.

By the winter of 1937, Vincent was once again out of tuition money. He owed money to his parents and to Norma. In the spring of 1938 he began hunting for a full-time job. Hard times were still in effect in 1938, and the best job Vincent could find was as a laborer on the All American Canal near the Mexican border. By the summer of 1938, he had saved $75.

1938
In the fall of 1938, he had a pick and shovel job, along with a graduate geologist from The University of Colorado, at a placer mine north of Durango, Colorado. That job lasted three months.

1939
In 1939 he went to Seattle to work at Northwest Testing Laboratories as a metallurgist for $100 a month. His only suit was the one he had received upon his high school graduation in 1929. By the Fall of 1939 he was earning $150 a month working at an ore dressing mill, The Asurite Mine, that Vincent called a "fly-by-night" outfit, in Nighthawk, on the Washington-Canadian border, a few miles west of Oroville, Washington.

Vincent and Norma lived in a cabin heated by a wood stove, with no running water. They carried water in a bucket from the irrigation ditch across the road. The ditch also served as their swimming pool on hot days, but because of the current, they always had to walk back to the cabin after climbing out of the ditch.

One day Vincent killed a rattlesnake that lived under the cabin. He and Norma took it inside the cabin to see what reaction their pet cats would have to the dead snake. The female cat wouldn’t go near it, and when her kittens were dropped near it, they instinctively leaped away.

They owned a 1935 Ford, which Norma used to drive to Oroville, Washington, to purchase supplies. One day as she was driving back to Nighthawk on the gravel road, she passed some Indians. Suddenly, they jumped onto the running boards of the car. Norma was terrified, but she kept driving, and when they reached their destination, they jumped off. They had simply hitched a ride.

1940
In the spring of 1940, he found work as a metallurgist at the "Treasure Vault Mine," West of Hailey, Idaho. Vincent said it was misnamed because the ore wasn't very high quality. By late fall, he was working as a chemist in Santa Monica for Douglas Aircraft.

1942
He was promoted to process engineer in the spring of 1942 and soon after was Chief of Processing Engineering at Douglas' Tulsa, Oklahoma facility where B-24 bombers were being built under contract to Consolidated Vultee.

In Tulsa, he and Norma didn't have the $500 down payment for a house, so they rented a house at 3125 E. Admiral Blvd. Here, their sons, David Victor and Duncan Norman, were born at St. Johns hospital. David was born on September 23, 1942, and Duncan was born on November 18, 1944.

1945
At the end of World War II, aircraft production stopped at the Tulsa plant. Douglas' employment dropped from 300,000 to 30,000, and Vincent once again was looking for work. In Detroit, Michigan, he got a job as a metallurgist in a scrap aluminum refinery in the fall of 1945.

The family rented at 18658 Bradford Avenue from September 1945 until April 1946. The house was in a dismal part of town, near the plant, and in certain winds, soot fell on the area. Norma had to remember to take the laundry off the clotheslines when winds were unfavorable to prevent them from getting sooty.

Vincent was not happy at this job and in six months had moved to Denver where he worked for a year with the Denver branch of the Bureau of Reclamation as a corrosion engineer.

1948
Vincent and Norma's third child, Naoma Elizabeth, was born in Denver on September 30, 1946. The family bought a house in the outskirts of Lakewood at 445 Balsam Street and raised ducks in the back yard. The ducks sometimes escaped their pen, quacked too loudly in the early morning under the bedroom window, and, one-by-one, found themselves “invited” to dinner.

This photo of 445 Balsam Street was taken 11 April 2008.

The house looks much the same as it did in 1948 except for the following differences:

• the front porch has been covered
• the two-story addition in the back, at the right rear of the house, has been added
• The right front of the house which used to be a one-car garage, has been converted to a room

In 1948, just as Vincent and some of his peers were about to get civil service ratings at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, there was a 40 percent layoff, and he was one of those losing his job. By now, his resume looked like that of a "perpetual drunkard," as he once put it. In order to strengthen his employment record, he decided to get some research experience.

He found work at Battelle Memorial Institute, a non-profit research organization in Columbus, Ohio, as a metallurgical engineer. He worked for Battelle for nearly 26 years, retiring in 1974 at the age of 64.

In the winter of 1948, he departed for Columbus, leaving his wife, Norma, and their three children in Lakewood, Colorado. Norma was to sell their car and house and then take the children to Columbus, Ohio where Vincent worked at his new job.

One snowy night the oil furnace stopped working. Norma put coats on the three children. She wore her fur coat that Vincent had bought her at Dupler's Furs in Denver. Since the telephone had been disconnected in preparation for the sale of the house, Norma walked to a neighbor's house to ask for help re-lighting the furnace.

A party was in progress at the neighbor's, but he agreed to get the furnace started. A few minutes after he had left, the furnace went out again, and Norma was faced with the prospect of interrupting the party once again. Frustrated with the responsibility of getting the house sold, disposing of the 1935 Ford, getting their belongings packed for the movers, taking care of the three children, and now having to ruin the neighbor's party, Norma cried. The neighbor came a second time to re-light the furnace, and this time, it stayed lit.

In Columbus, Vincent got a room at the Chittenden Hotel, close enough to Battelle that he could walk to work. To save money, he didn't buy a car. Finally, Norma and the three kids joined him in Columbus, traveling by train early in 1949.

When they arrived in Columbus, Vincent took them by taxi from the station to a small, new, two-bedroom brick house north of the city that he had purchased at 68 W. Rathbone Road. Their eldest son, David, recalled that dinner on his first night in the new house was Cheerios. By the end of 1948, Vincent had passed the sixteen-hour Ohio test for Professional Engineer (metallurgical option).

1949
In 1949, feeling a need for more knowledge in the field of metallurgy, he enrolled at Ohio State University, at his own expense, completing a Master of Science degree in metallurgical engineering, with a "B" average. He worked full time at Battelle and went to night school at OSU.

1950
Victor and Vincent finished the open attic so that the two boys could share a room and their sister could have one of the two bedrooms on the main floor. They also added a study for Vincent. Vincent got to work and school by bus, but the family decided to purchase a car in 1950. Vincent bought a used, two-door 1948 Chevrolet sedan from a coworker at Battelle.

Vincent's eldest son, David, recalls that his father's favorite phrases were, "He's a good egg" and "I'm tickled pink."

1955
In 1955 the family moved a mile north to 139 Westview Avenue to a frame, two-bedroom house with a finished attic and a half-acre of land. The attic configuration was similar to their previous house with the boys sharing half of the attic and Vincent using the other half as a study.

Vincent and Norma had a large garden, and they raised tomatoes, corn, and many other vegetables.

After he was with Battelle for five years, Vincent got 4 weeks vacation each year. Since it was too expensive to put the family of five up in hotels for four weeks, Vincent and Norma took the kids on fabulous four-week automobile camping trips to such places as the upper peninsula of Michigan, Maine, the Grand Canyon, the Smokey Mountains, New Jersey, Canada, Colorado, and California.

During the mid 1950s, Vincent took his son, David, with him to Battelle. There, Vincent introduced David to several researchers who held doctorate degrees. Vincent wanted to go back to school to get his Ph.D., but Norma would not allow it because it required him to spend too much time away from home, as she had found when he had worked on his master's degree at OSU.

Vincent often told David that without a good education, he would be a failure, and it was these words that drove David to continue his education until he had received a doctorate in information systems.

1956
In 1956 Vincent bought a Chevrolet station wagon, the family's first new car. Between 1956 and his retirement in 1974, Vincent continued his education with post-graduate courses at various universities. He maintained memberships in the Ohio Society of Professional Engineers, the National Society of Professional Engineers, the British Institution of Metallurgists, the British Chartered Engineers, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Metallkunde, and the American Chemical Society. He was also a member of the Sigma Xi research, and Phi Lambda Upsilon research and chemical honoraria.

During his 26 years at Battelle, he published many scientific papers, including such titles as "Structural Materials for Use Above 3000 f," and "Powder Metallurgy," written for the Defense Metals Information Center. For the 200th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1968, he wrote the sections on Tungsten and Tungsten Carbide. One report, "Tungsten Powder Metallurgy," for NASA was reprinted as NASA SP-5035. His last publication, "Formation of Concretions Occurring in the Ohio Shales Along the Olentangy River," was printed in the May 1975 issue of the Ohio Journal of Science.

1970
In 1970, at age 60, Vincent discovered he had Parkinson's disease. It attacks the nervous system, making coordinated movements difficult, affecting balance, and weakening the body. Fortunately, it does not affect the mind. By 1975, Vincent could no longer write clearly. He typed for awhile, but lost his ability to do that in 1980.

Parkinson's victim's speech is usually slurred, and it is difficult to understand them. Vincent took speech therapy, which helped him enunciate more clearly.

With the children off on their own, Norma and Vincent decided to do some traveling on their own. They visited Hawaii first, then planned a trip to Europe where they would pick up a new Mercedes Benz at the factory in Stuttgart, Germany, drive it around Europe, and have it shipped home.

1971
In 1971, during the European vacation, they took delivery of the Mercedes Benz and continued the trip. On July 27, 1971, in Apeldoorn, Holland, their car was hit by a large truck carrying steel when they made a left turn from a small road onto a major thoroughfare outside of town.

Norma was in the passenger seat, on the side that the truck hit. She was fatally injured, and died several hours later in the early morning hours of July 28 in the intensive care unit of the Apeldorn hospital.

Vincent stayed in the hospital three weeks, recovering from contusions of the brain. His son, David, stayed with his doctor, Dr. Leydesdorff, and his family during that time, returning with Vincent when he was well enough to travel.

Norma's body was shipped to the U. S. for burial in Walnut Grove Cemetery, south of Worthington, Ohio.

The loss of his wife had a devastating effect on Vincent. Much of his waking hours were spent dwelling on his wonderful life with her and the accident in Holland. He always felt that the accident was his fault.

1972
Vincent's second son, Duncan, prodded him to attend a singles group in Worthington, Ohio, where, he told Vincent, a lot of old bags were. There, Vincent met several women. Vincent began dating Flora Isabell Ullom. On June 14, 1972, they married.

Of all the women whom he could have married, she was the best possible partner he could have had. She took excellent care of him until his death in June 1990. Flora took an active part in controlling the quantity and timing of his dosages and diet.

Around this time, Vincent decided to take over the role of keeping family communications going since Norma had passed away. He instituted a "round robin" letter. He wrote the first letter and send it to Duncan, who added his letter and sent it on to Naoma, who added her letter and sent it to David, who sent it back to Vincent, and so on. This helped everyone keep up with what was going on in the immediate family.

1974
Vincent retired from Battelle in 1974, and he and Flora enjoyed travel during the mid to early 1980s, until he was too weak to leave the house.

Over the years, Vincent did not show as severe a physical deterioration as did many of his peers with the same disease. The doctor's believed that this was due in large measure to the effort that Flora made to keep his medicine schedule precise, insuring a good diet, and adjusting his medication when the doctors had no idea what was right for him.

1990
Vincent's disease continued to slowly weaken him. His goal was to reach his 80th birthday on June 10, 1990. In early June 1990 he underwent a bowel and hernia operation, spending his birthday in intensive care. He died in Mount Carmel West hospital in Columbus, Ohio at 9 p.m. on July 12, 1990. He is buried next to his first wife, Norma Bell, in Walnut Grove Cemetery, Worthington, Ohio.