Margie Southworth Barlow
- b. February 3, 1941 in Caroline County, VA
Gordon Kenneth Barlow
- b. August 14, 1938 in Caroline County, VA
Margie and Gordon Barlow
- m. June 18, 1960
Children
Kimberly Barlow Plotner
- b. May, 1963
- m. Russel Craig Plotner
- Child – Matthew Dwayne Plotner
Kristy Barlow McComas
- b. June 1965
- Child – Emily Southworth McComas
Marjorie Rae Southworth Barlow
Marjorie (Margie) was born February 3, 1941, at home on Stanhope Farm in Carloine County, Virginia to Gladys Andrews Southworth and Lewis Wesley Southworth. She grew up as a farm girl working with her mom and dad on their 430 acre family crop farm. She attended Edmund Pendleton Grade School where she was crowned May Queen in 1954. She graduated from Caroline High School (CHS) in Bowling Green, VA in 1959. While in high school she was active in the FHA (Future Homemakers of America) and served as the President of the Caroline High School FHA Chapter from 1958-1959.
During her senior year in high school, the fall 1958, her father died unexpectedly of heart failure. She and her mother, with help from Gordon and neighbors, finished harvesting and marketing the fall crops of tobacco, soy beans, corn and then the marketing of the livestock. These were difficult times, but with the help of church, family, and friends they managed. In the spring of 1959, she and her mother had a farm sale that raised needed money and her mother leased the land at Stanhope Farm and returned to teaching elementary school. Her mother sold Stanhope in 1963 and built a new home in Bowling Green, VA to be near the school where she taught third grade.
Margie was a member of Mount Herman Baptist Church in Shumansville, VA. She enjoyed music and played the panio for church services. She also loved playing the accordion.
Margie and her friend Juanita Barlow Nicholson were guest singing artists of Sunshine Sue on the Old Dominion Barn Dance, a Saturday Night radio show on WRVA in Richmond, VA. Sunshine Sue was the first female radio emcee. She help launch the careers of the great country music stars such as Chet Atkins, Earl Scruggs, and the Carter Sisters.
After graduation from CHS, Margie was employed by G and G Farm Service in Milford, VA, an authorized dealer for Southern States Cooperative, as office manager and grain buyer. While employed with G and G Farm Services, Margie completed her training in interior and exterior paint applications for the home, farm, and farm equipment.
On June 18, 1960, she married Gordon Barlow at Mount Herman Baptist Church in Shumansville, VA. Margie and Gordon spent their honeymoon at Niagara Falls, NY. Margie wanted to see the falls and the gardens and Gordon wanted to visit Fort Niagara. She always says, “This should have been a warning of what would be ahead in our journey.”
In 1961 Margie and Gordon left Stanhope Farm to live in Pittsburgh, PA while Gordon attended the University of Pittsburgh, School of Pharmacy. It was at this time that Margie became a full-time homemaker. She remembers this a little differently in that Gordon had many single classmates that would help buy food during these struggling times and she would spend her days preparing country cooking and doing laundry for the neighbors (boys and girls)!”
In May 1963, while living in Pittsburgh, Margie gave birth to their first daughter, Kimberly Lynn. In 1964, after Gordon’s graduation from pharmacy school, she and Gordon moved to Bowling Green, VA. In June 1965, Margie gave birth to their second daughter, Kristy Lynn.
In 1969 Margie and Gordon moved to Staunton, VA where they lived until 1992 when they purchased 100 acres in Swoope, VA (Augusta County) and named it Lynn Rae. Kim graduated from Mary Baldwin University and Eastern Mennonite University, School of Nursing and works in neurology at the University of Virginia Hospital in Charlottesville, VA. Kristy graduated from Mary Baldwin University in finance and had a career in purchasing for nuclear submarine construction at the Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, VA. She now manages North Mountain Holding Company in Staunton, VA. Today, both girls and their families live on divided parcels of the family’s Lynn Rae property.
Margie continues to enjoy her home at Lynn Rae and she especially enjoys her two grandchildren, even as they go off to college: Matthew Dwain Plotner (Mary Baldwin University in criminal justice) and Emily Southworth McComas (University of Tennessee in forensic anthropology). For now, Margie’s real job of raising Gordon has not changed!
Gordon Kenneth Barlow
Gordon was born August 14, 1938 at home near Corbin in Caroline County, VA to Edith Louise Atkinson Barlow and Woodford ‘Woody” Lewis Barlow. His mother was a crop/truck farmer and his father a carpenter and farmer. His grandmother on his mother’s side was one-half Native American (Mattaponi Tribe – Powhatan Nation).
As a child Gordon worked with his mother and father on the fifty acre crop farm raising wheat, corn, vegetables, chickens, hogs, and turkeys for the city market in nearby Fredericksburg, VA. Gordon declares that his Mom taught him how to sell. For example, the first delivery stop on the weekly route to the city grocery shops was Spicer’s Store. Mr. Spicder would always say, “Edith do you have any of those little baby lima beans already shelled? My wife loves those!” Her reply was always, “Yes, Mr. Spicer but you have to buy corn, tomatoes, snap beans, watermelons, and cantaloupes to get to buy the limas.” So it went all day at every grocery store. She made the sales because we had spent hours, starting at day-break, picking and shelling fresh baby lima beans.
On weekends and sometimes during the summer from age 10 until Gordon went off to college, he worked with his father building or remodeling houses, churches, stores, or barns. This provided him woodworking and building experience that he would use his entire life. On Easter Sunday 1955, when the main business district of the town of Bowling Green burned, Gordon, at the direction of Sheriff Brooks, emptied Holmes Pharmacy to prevent loss of stock in the fire. As a high school teenager, using his family’s pickup, he managed to empty the Rx department (drugs, Rx files, cash resister and more) and he stored the contents in the family barn.
On Monday Gordon went back to town and saw Doc Holmes, the pharmacist, and told him about saving his Rx and files. He asked Gordon to go with him down the street to a hardware store that was not burned. There Doc Holmes got space and re-opened his pharmacy at this temporary location. Doc Holmes asked Gordon to retrieve the pharmacy items and help him set-up in the new location. That was the beginning of Gordon’s career of sixty-five years in pharmacy and health care consulting.
Gordon graduated from Caroline High School in Bowling Green, VA in 1956. His grades were only average for a farm boy, but with the help of Doc Holmes he was accepted in pre-pharmacy at what is today Virginia Commonwealth University. In 1961 after completing his pre-pharmacy, financial and law courses and getting married, he and Margie worked for 2 years to save money for pharmacy school, Gordon enrolled in the University of Pittsburgh, School of Pharmacy. He graduated in 1964. He completed his Pharmacy internship at West Penn Hospital Pharmacy in Pittsburgh and became licensed in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
After working in his home town of Bowling Green, VA as a pharmacist for four years, he purchased Medical Center Pharmacy in Staunton, VA in 1969. Over the next decade he founded Virginia Pharmacy, Inc. and built and operated nine other pharmacies throughout northern and western Virginia. In 1975 he took computer programming classes at Mary Baldwin University. A year later, in 1976, he developed the first computerized prescription software in the United States and consulted with the Commonwealth of Virginia, Board of Pharmacy to write the first ever regulation for computerized prescription medical records using a pharmaceutical database.
He also founded Lamco Pharmaceutical, Inc. (a generic pharmaceutical wholesale company); Shenandoah Supply, Inc. (a distributor of physician and hospital supplies); and Valley Home Health (a nursing, certified medical assistants, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and durable medical equipment agency). In 1985 he sold his pharmacy companies to a national chain and donated the home health agency to his local hospital.
It was time for retirement, but after two weeks at home, Margie said, “This is my space, find something to do.” In 1986 Gordon founded Health Care Planning and Development, Inc., a consulting firm offering services to hospitals and physician group practices. It was during this time that hospitals were expanding into outpatient service and setting up for-profit ventures to include physician ownership. In just three short years Gordon grew the consulting business to have clients in four states. In 1989 he founded Health Care Management, Inc. which became the management companion to his consulting business. He designed and coded a software program to analyze DRG (Diagnostic Related Group) data which accurately forecast the revenue stream for companion hospital services. The company also developed a computerized medical billing service with a financial staff to manage the databases. By 1991 the company employed more than eleven hundred physicians, nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, certified medical assistants, pharmacists, and support staff. He relied on five contracts to provide a steady revenue stream for Health Care Management.
In 2000, after fifteen years of travel and business commitment and the end of the last of his five-year contracts, he again retired. In 2001 he signed a sixty-day contract to consult for a private physician’s group to manage and grow their practice with annual revenue of two million. This sixty-day contract lasted for fourteen years.
Gordon’s life was not just medical consulting. Since age 17, when he was inspired by Miss Anne Conway (his senior high school United States history teacher), he loved and studied history. In 1995 he founded the Contemporary Longrifle Association (CLA) and the Contemporary Longrifle Foundation. In 1999 he became President of the Kentucky Rifle Association (KRA) and founded the Kentucky Rifle Foundation. He is an avid firearms and accoutrement collector and maintains a website at barlowantiques.com.
Gordon served on the staff at Virginia Commonwealth University, School of Pharmacy providing lectures to senior students on retail pharmacy development. He was routinely asked to lecture master’s program students at George Mason University and Georgetown University. He served on the Board of Directors for the American Red Cross, Augusta County Historical Society, City Bank, National Association of Medical Equipment Suppliers, Staunton-Augusta Rescue Squad, Staunton Country Club and he served as advisory to the Augusta Free Clinic.
Gordon is the author of several books including: “Following the Tradition,” “August County, Virginia’s Western Frontier,” and a series of books for the CLA known as the “CLA Artists Series.” He has written articles for the “American Tradition” a CLA publication, the “Augusta County Historical Society Bulletin,” “Wild West Virginia,” and “Virginia Wildlife.”
Today he is content serving as the volunteer Executive Director of the CLA and editor of the “American Tradition.” He will soon launch a new CLA book series to be known as the “CLA Collector Series.” Because of his love of outdoor photography, he will soon launch a website of his work at www.gordonbarlowphotography.com. Over the years he has made many pieces of painted furniture for family and friends or charities, but finds woodwork challenging because of the dust.
Gordon is known to work seven days a week unless traveling, away on a photography trip, or chasing a historical artifact. At 83 years old he remains as active as possible including construction work, woodworking, and working with his grandson on his 100 acres at Lynn Rae. He has a famous quote: “Life would be so boring without a daily work list.”
Page developed by Margie and Gordon Barlow gordon@amaty.com