Jim Barker Jr., sculling champion, rowing hall of famer, veteran, and longtime Haverford School coach, has died at 92

James Joseph Barker Jr., 92, of Philadelphia, national champion sculler, member of three halls of fame, retired longtime rowing coach at Haverford School and Undine Barge Club, veteran, and proud family man, died Tuesday, Aug. 16, of complications from several illnesses from which he had been suffering.

Known as one of the most successful, humble, and lovable people to ever dip an oar into the Schuylkill, Mr. Barker won 24 national championships as a competitor, coached Olympic and world champions, and steered Haverford School and Undine Barge scullers, rowers, and teams to hundreds of local and national championships for more than 50 years.

In 2011, Clete Graham, former commodore of the Schuylkill Navy, called Mr. Barker “a legendary figure” and “an institution on Boathouse Row.“

“This sport has done so much for me, so much for my family. I feel like I owe the sport.”

Mr. Barker also championed diversity on the Schuylkill, and, beginning in 1947, helped women and girls, people of color and various religions, and younger athletes earn previously unavailable seats in boats on the river.

In 1989, he told The Inquirer: “In my wildest dreams, I could never imagine it would lead to what it has.” In 2002, he said: “Part of the enjoyment of coaching has been the lifelong friendships. It’s more than coaching a school.”

A member of the Roxborough, Haverford School, and National Rowing Foundation halls of fame, Mr. Barker coached his sons, Jim and Jeff, to national championships at Undine in the 1970s, and other elite athletes moved to Philadelphia just to train with him. “The word is out around the country that if you want to learn sculling, come to Undine and work with Jim Barker,” elite heavyweight single sculler Frank Rowe told The Inquirer in 1989.

Mr. Barker won two dozen national championships and was national lightweight singles sculling champion for 10 straight years as a competitor at Undine, and earned the 2019 Dr. George Morton Illman Award from the Malta Boat Club for lifelong contributions to rowing.

He even won an event at the national championships of Japan during his time in the Army in the 1950s.

At Haverford School, beginning in 1962, his scullers and rowers won more than 150 city championships, 100 Stotesbury Cup Regatta titles, and 100 national championships, 19 straight in the 1980s and ’90s. Hundreds of Haverford scullers and rowers went on to compete at major college programs, and dozens advanced to international events.

» READ MORE: Fords' Barker is a coach for the ages

Some returned to be his assistants before he retired in 2012. “He’s basically a second father to me,” elite sculler Rudy Lewis, a 1984 Haverford School graduate, told The Inquirer in 1989. “You look up to him like he’s God.”

The Haverford School boathouse in Conshohocken is named the James J. Barker Sculling Center and is home to the James J. Barker Jr. quadruple shell. The parents association endowed the school’s James J. Barker Jr. Fund for Rowing in 2011, and the Barker Cup is awarded annually to the winning boys’ lightweight doubles scullers at the Stotesbury Cup Regatta.

He won seven gold medals as a non-Jewish coach of the U.S. crew at the 1981 Maccabiah Games in Israel, helped renew the Gold Cup race in 2011, and the high school single sculls at the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta are named in his honor.

Winning, Mr. Barker always said, is no accident. “The old college try? Going out the day of the race and pulling off a win? That’s for the birds,” Mr. Barker told The Inquirer in 1989. “You don’t win big-time competitions with rah-rah stuff. You win with preparation.”

He also worked for 25 years as a referee for Philadelphia Catholic League and local college basketball games and 43 years as a machinist for the Philadelphia Gear Corp. His family noted his “unflappable moral code and his commitment to fairness” in an online tribute, and his granddaughter Kate said in a tribute: “Pop worked three jobs to ensure his kids would have every opportunity he didn’t.”

» READ MORE: For Barker, 50th year of Stotesbury regatta

Born March 15, 1930, in the Brewerytown section of Philadelphia, Mr. Barker graduated from Murrell Dobbins High School in 1948. A quarterback on the Dobbins football team, he was looking for a way to bulk up during his junior year, and a friend suggested he join the school’s rowing team.

After a few days on the river, Mr. Barker never played football again but won a national high school single sculls championship as a senior.

He met Joan Taylor at Dobbins, and they were married for 70 years. Inseparable despite his hectic schedule, the couple lived in Roxborough for more than 60 years and had sons Jim III and Jeff and daughters Lynn and Joan.

He was drafted into the Army in 1950, served on Okinawa during the Korean War, and family lore has it that he skipped out of camp in Missouri for two days one winter to spend time with the visiting Joan. “They wanted to be together constantly,” his son Jeff said.

Mr. Barker preached the “religion of family” and challenged each generation to do better than the previous one. He was an Eagles season-ticket holder — and tailgate lover — for 35 years, and his granddaughter called him the family’s “center of gravity.”

When asked in 1992 how long he planned to coach, Mr. Barker told The Inquirer: “I’ll keep going for as long as I can do right by the kids.” When asked again in 2011, he said: “That’s up to my wife. … This sport has done so much for me, so much for my family. I feel like I owe the sport. I feel like I need to keep giving back.”

In addition to his wife, children, and granddaughter, Mr. Barker is survived by seven other grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and other relatives. A granddaughter and brother died earlier.

Services were Aug. 29 and 30.

Donations in his name may be made to the Philadelphia Gold Challenge Cup Foundation, 1149 W. Lancaster Ave., Suite U-3, Bryn Mawr, Pa. 19010.