Sarah is thinking about Gary W. Bargar.
I’d like to clean up my Goodreads account a bit re: some beleaguered “Currently Reading” titles that I’ve been reading online. These are:
- In Powder and Crinoline: Fairy Tales Retold by Sir Arthur Quiller Couch, via the HathiTrust Digital Library: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x000424553
- The mastership and its fruits : the emancipated slave face to face with his old master (A supplemental report to Hon. Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War 1864), via the Library of Congress web site: https://www.loc.gov/resource/lcrbmrp.t2313/
- What Happened to Mr. Forster? (Bargar, Gary W.), via the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/whathappenedtomr0000barg/mode/2up
- Reminiscences (Colman, Lucy N.), via the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/reminiscencescolm
It’s easy to get behind on these online titles. You start thinking the web sites that host them are going to be forever, which is a dangerous assumption to make. And What Happened to Mr. Forster? in particular seems like one to nail down before something weird happens, given that it is the only one still under copyright. This is a book that shows up as a passing reference in various lists of early gay YA: it was published in 1981 and features a young boy with a gay teacher (or so I assume based on the blurb and what I’ve heard randomly elsewhere.) It has been on my to-read list since 2016, and I guess I finally started reading it back in May of last year, when I got exactly 9 pages into the Archive.org copy before leaving it to languish.
Bargar was also the author of Life. Is. Not. Fair., published in 1984, which features a friendship between a white boy and his new black neighbor: ie. another “problem novel.” And then, Gary W. Bargar died, as I found when I went Googling. Here is what I find for Gary W. Bargar:
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?145761
Five essays for the Baum Bugle, an Oz zine, published from 1963-1965. The Baum Bugle continues in its role as the “official journal of the International Wizard of Oz Club.”
https://www.newspapers.com/image/55829713/?clipping_id=22531100
The Kansas City Times
Wed, Apr 28, 1965
Page 3
“Recognition to Eleven Seniors: Greater Kansas City Students win National Merit Scholarships, UP TO $6,000 A YEAR. The Awards Here Are Among 1,900 Granted Over the Nation.”
Eleven high school seniors in Greater Kansas City have won National Merit scholarships – stipends ranging from $400 to more than $6,000 a year depending on the student’s need.
The awards were announced yesterday by the National Merit Scholarship Foundation, Evanston, Ill. More than 1900 scholarships were given across the country – the highest total in the 10-year history of the awards.
The winners locally:
[…]
Gary W. Bargar, son of Mrs. Dorothy K. Bargar, 1315 Volker boulevard, and W. H. Bargar, 17301 Swope lane, Southeast high school, won the Gulf Merit scholarship. He plans to study elementary education at William Jewell college.”
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/173787651/gary-w-bargar
Gary W. Bargar’s listing on FindAGrave (1947—1985), where he is remembered kindly by several people who shared memories.
He is also commemorated by author James Cross Giblin by a dedication in his book When Plague Strikes: The Black Death, Smallpox, AIDS. Giblin remarks elsewhere,
“[It] wasn’t until I got into the research for the AIDS section that I discovered the emotional reasons that motivated me to write the book. Thousands of people in the 1980s had been affected by AIDS, many of them fatally. Among the dead were some of the most gifted creators of children’s books, including two young men l’d worked with, the novelist Gary W. Bargar and the picture book author-illustrator Ron Wegen. I realized that When Plague Strikes was my way of dealing with those losses and paying tribute to all the talented people whose lives had been cut short so tragically. When the manuscript was finished, I dedicated it to the memory of Gary and Ron.”
The Best in Children’s Nonfiction: Reading, Writing, and Teaching Orbis Pictus Award Books, editors Julie M. Jensen, Myra Zarnowski, Richard M. Kerper, p. 74
The Librarians Lauderdale 