Norman Barstow ’62

Norman Barstow ’62, of Hartford, Conn.; July 31, after suffering for several years with frontotemporal dementia. He sang in the Brunaires while a Navy ROTC student at Brown. Following graduation, he spent two years serving on a destroyer in the Mediterranean, then returned to Mystic, Conn., where he worked for a book importer. For the next five years he worked as a group insurance underwriter and eventually became an elementary school teacher in Simsbury, Conn., where he spent his last ten years as the science curriculum coordinator. He served as president of the Connecticut Science Teachers’ Association. Music was a big part of his life and he sang in glee clubs and church choirs, taught sea shanties to girl scouts at Mystic Seaport, and was a member of the Spare Parts a cappella group. He enjoyed travel and foreign languages, acquiring enough vocabulary to interact with anyone he encountered through the years he lived in Greece and Bulgaria. He also liked taking photographs of interesting faces and beautiful landscapes and was a tinkerer who liked to create collages and mini sculptures out of a variety of found objects. He is survived by his wife, Jane; two daughters, including Amanda Barstow ’00; two grandsons; a sister; and a brother; and he will be mourned as the King of Limericks by his fraternity brothers, as W.H. Snapper by his Navy buddies, and as Stormin’ Norman by his neighbors.