Geneva celebrates the life of a high school teacher who brought out the best in the athletes and students he coached.
John Barton's funeral Tuesday night might have been the best I've ever been to—maybe because it wasn't so much a funeral as a celebration of a good man's life. Yes, there were plenty of sniffles and more than a few tears, but there was also a great deal of laughter—as Barton's hero, Jim Valvano, might have scripted it—as well as the lasting impression of a man whose career was devoted to motivating others to be greater, perhaps, than they ever thought they could be. "He loved the Geneva community, and the Geneva community loved him back," said Barton's son, Scott. One theme that kept repeating, over and over, from relatives and friends, former students and athletes who stood to speak Tuesday, was how much Barton cared about and respected …
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Malone Funeral Home
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John Barton always wore his heart on his sleeve.
John Barton was—I have to say it now—quite possibly the worst postgame interview in the history of basketball coaching. I covered Geneva High basketball for The Republican during the first half of the 1980s—basically the first half of Barton’s 1980-89 run as the Viking boys’ head basketball coach. Allen Mead, The Republican’s publisher since 1950, still did almost all of the weekly write-ups of Viking football in the fall. But increasingly, after I came aboard after having graduated from the U of I journalism school in 1979, Allen (being no fool) would go to Arizona or Florida or some other warm place during lengthy stretches of the winter, leaving me to handle much of the back-page Viking hoops coverage. Even when Allen was in town, there…
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Geneva Community High School
416 McKinley Ave, Geneva, IL
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Alison Gerlach Blaser
6:44 pm on Saturday, September 1, 2012
Mr. Vitton...so good to see your name out here, too. So much of what they talk about for Coach Barton was his time spent coaching guys' sports, but he was such an extraordinary coach for track, too. We were so very lucky to get to work with him and I was so sad to hear of his passing. I'll always remember his booming, encouraging words from the bleachers when I was running. more ›