PAUL BARTON Obituary

PAUL B. BARTON, JR.
May 9, 2021
September 30, 1930
During the early hours of Sunday, May 9, 2021, Paul Barton, a geologist of international repute and a man of integrity, died in the loving care of his wife, Patty. He was satisfied to having lived a long and happy life marked by personal and professional accomplishments.
Paul was born September 30, 1930, in New York City, to Paul Booth Barton and Dorothy Lee Diggs Barton, his father originally of Ohio, his mother of Virginia. Paul's father, an electrical engineer, was assigned by Westinghouse to Pittsburgh, PA. and there Paul spent his formative years along with his two sisters, Dorothy Jean Barton(Reid) and Irma Faye Barton (Augenstein). He was fortunate to have had a kind of American boyhood which may no longer exist: receiving a red two-wheeled bicycle on his tenth birthday, building a dam and constructing a leaky raft with a best friend, playing kick-the-can in the evenings, constructing a crystal radio set, making model airplanes. It also meant backyard construction with his father on weekends and summer chores devised by his mother. He credited his father with having taught him the fine art of problem-solving and his mother with teaching him to finish what he started.
As a teenager attending Baldwin Township High School his lifelong interest in geology was ignited by his geography instructor. At 14, during a neighborhood game, he sustained a broken neck, undiagnosed at the time, which would cast a long shadow over his later years. Paul went on to become a 1952 graduate of Pennsylvania State University and in the following three years he obtained his Ph.D in Geology from Columbia University.
Upon graduation Paul was hired immediately by the United States Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia, where he would spend the next forty years as an economic geologist. That was also the year he married a college classmate, Martha Ashby, after a lengthy courtship. To their great joy they soon became the parents of Mark and John. Paul was an exceptional father.
Certainly a major accomplishment in Paul's career was the project he shared with his close and admired colleague Phillip Bethke. In Creede, Colorado, they led one of the most detailed and significant studies ever made of a mineral district. It required their supervision and the cooperation of perhaps fifty scientists, students and others. Paul and Phil took great pleasure in having helped many of the students taking part in the study achieve their advanced graduate degrees.
Among many awards Paul received over the years was election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1978. In 1984 he was given the Roebling Medal by the Mineralogical Society of America for publication of outstanding original research in mineralogy. The mineral "bartonite" was named in his honor. He was the recipient of the Penrose Medal given by the Society of Economic Geologists, an award that recognized "a full career in the performance of unusually original work in the earth sciences."
After 56 years of a marriage devoted to each other's well-being, Paul's wife Martha died in 2011.
The following May, 2012, Paul wed Patty Hudson of Colorado Springs, a marriage that brought their friendship of more than seventy -five years full circle.
Paul's family includes his sons, Mark (Isabel) of Tucson, AZ., John (Maria) of Clyde, N.C., and his grandchildren: David, Jamie, Laura and Rachael. It was Paul's wish to not have a service and that his body be donated to Science Care in Aurora, Colorado.