Riley Logan Barker has “left the building.” He went away mid-morning on Friday, August 29th, in his home while riding his exercise bike. His family and friends are bereft. They are missing his boisterous, full-hearted laugh, his joyful kidding, his genuine listening, his always showing up whenever needed. He lived large all his life.
His arrival in this world, specifically in Butte, Montana, on Dec. 12, 1944, however, was dicey because he was a tiny preemie. When his parents Robert and Betty Barker were told he was not expected to live, they gave him the name Stanley just for a tombstone, a name they would happily never actually have to use, one Riley would change legally years later. By the time he was in elementary school, his family had relocated to the mountain mining town of Lead, South Dakota. The day after Christmas when he was just eight, he rode his new sled into the path of a mining truck. Commercial planes were grounded that day for the weather, but a family friend who happened to be the mine’s head lawyer arranged with the commander of Elsworth Airforce Base in Rapid City for a military plane to air lift him to Mayo Clinic in time for doctors there to save his life. When he returned to school wearing the helmet he needed while recovering from brain surgery, he was of course teased. Years later he would credit that many months long experience with turning him into the joking, over-the-top prankster he became.
He recovered and grew up in a vibrant mining community with his parents, his older sister Sharon, and his younger brother Kelly. From an early age he enjoyed hunting and fishing with family and friends in the beautiful Black Hills National Forest. Treasured friendships he made there were to last his lifetime. And all those folks know well who they are.
His adult life began with a four-year stint in the United States Air Force where he trained for the military police, serving first in Montana mainly guarding missile sites and later in Puerto Rico where he lived off base with his bride Connie Holt, an elementary school teacher. After the service, the couple settled in Manhattan, Kansas, where he completed a bachelor’s degree in biology at Kansas State and became an avid-for-life football fan of the Wildcats. While in college, he also started working part-time in business by selling bonds. His strong interest in the financial world led to a successful twenty-five-year career as a stockbroker in Colorado. He was an outstanding salesman and became an executive vice-president in his company.
He settled with his family in Niwot, Colorado, where his son Logan Robert was born in 1974 and his daughter Elizabeth Sandra in 1979. With the Rocky Mountains for their playground, the family enjoyed hiking, camping, fishing, skiing, snowmobiling and even rafting on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. He participated in significant fund raisers, once bicycling in “Ride the Rockies,” one of the top tours in the USA.
He also enjoyed flying and would keep his pilot’s license valid into his sixties.
The family liked to travel and especially enjoyed going to Mexico and to Ireland. Visiting international students attending the University of Colorado stayed with them at times. Foster children were also welcome in the home, and they found Riley a strong, caring father figure. A skilled photographer, Riley chronicled many of the family adventures, and he won awards for his published wildlife photos. He loved his pet dogs all his life, and leaves behind his oft-photographed and much-loved English mastiff, Winston Churchill, who still looks for him now as he grieves.
By the early 1990’s Riley became interested in venture capitalism and began his own business “The Niwot Capital Group” which he would later register as “The Profit Hound” and run the rest of his life. He worked energetically and productively as a business consultant to a wide-variety of small businesses. He travelled to Russia once on a business trip where he visited major mining facilities and especially enjoyed being at Lake Baikal. For awhile he taught inmates soon to be released from prison how to start their own businesses and consulted with a number of them for years. Some of these clients became friends. On hearing of Riley’s passing one of them described him as having been “the only light in a very dark time” and as having “an everlasting effect” on their lives.
In 1997 after a divorce, he relocated to live and work in Southern Illinois where he married Barbara James, a high school friend and a community college instructor. Their combined extended families include son Logan Barker and daughter-in-law Kelly Ann and their daughters Skylar and Lindsay; daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law Flavio Aquino and their son Kyle and daughter Alinee; daughter Anna and son-in-law Shawn Margrum and sons Deavon, Jashawn, Darius, Malik, Haven and Holston, and daughters Aliyah, Eva, and Nisha and grandson-in-law Storm Clarry; daughter Brittany and son-in-law Mike Stringer and daughter Becca Hovatter; and bonus daughter Sarah Settles and her daughters Trayah and Lyric. He loved them all generously and was much loved in return. No doubt his grandchildren will roll their eyes and smile whenever they fondly remember him teasing “Have a rotten day!” each time they left him.
He loved to banter with friends, too, and often laughed most when a joke was on him. Recently he invited friends over in a text promising an outrageous, impossible gala. When one clever friend texted back, “Well, what bands will be playing?” he replied “The Grateful Living.” And that was exactly how he lived.
A celebration of Riley’s life will be at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 5, at the Don Luna Event Center in Carbondale, Illinois. Memorials may be made to the donor’s choice and can be accepted at the venue. Macz Funeral Homes is assisting the family with the gathering. For more information or to share an on-line memory of Riley, visit www.maczfuneralhomes.com.
