Article originally appeared in the September 2023 Legacy Ledger (Issue 37).
Rex Bickers (FCHS ‘70)
Jodi Stiller Meier (FCHS ’82), Guest Contributor
Glenn Barnet (1925-1994)
(Lafayette Elementary School Principal, 1957-1993)
Glenn Barnett grew up near English, Indiana in Crawford County. Serving in the Army Air Corps 1944-1946, he was able to go to Bloomington, thanks to the GI Bill. At age 21, he married Bonnie Marshall (from Crawford County also) and graduated from IU in 1948. He taught for one year in Paoli, then moved to New Albany (“in town”, initially). That set up the path that would lead him to Lafayette Elementary in 1956. The Barnetts moved to Buffalo Trails in 1960.
Lafayette’s physical construction had been a bit piecemeal, and Glenn’s first year was too… half the day teaching sixth grade and the other half fulfilling the duties of principal. By 1957, the school was complete, and he began his 36-year voyage as fulltime principal, shaping the soul of Lafayette.
He began with three cornerstones: caring, humor and respect. Kids learned respect from seeing how he treated others. Mr. Fritz, the custodian, was his colleague in the same professional way that teachers were. He mixed in a passion for the arts, layering in band and orchestra teachers… and for everyone, choral music with Mrs. Beatty. Lunch was immersed in classical music from his own LPs. He was a father figure to Boy Scouts who found an after-school home at Lafayette. With his coaching partners Phil Hart and Bill Fry, he made wrestling and basketball the outlets for sports achievement, respected as much as proficiency at the blackboard.
The Barnetts’ legacy includes four children, all FC grads (Glenda ’69, the late Mike Sappenfield ’71, John ’72 and Wanda ’76), four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. For a few dozen lucky kids, he was “the dad of Buffalo Trails”. Both co-authors of this profile had that good fortune.
His kind and gentle hands extended for miles across the Knobs and beyond. With a small group of local leaders, he helped to oversee the creation of Floyds Knobs Community Club, and he was its first president. He impacted parents, kids, grandparents and grandkids… some he never actually met. Many still live near Scottsville Road; others went on to ivory towers and everywhere in between. They held on to what they got at Lafayette: educators, doctors, lawyers, musicians. Some are builders or farmers; some work on cars or tractors or something high tech. He would value them all and simply ask: “Do you live your life with caring, humor and respect?”
Read the entire September 2023 Legacy Ledger (Issue 37) edition.