Remembering Cole Barton
This one is hard to write.
Last week on Wednesday afternoon, Cole Barton died. His passing was sudden and unexpected. His family, his friends, his neighbors, his colleagues, his former students—all of us are reeling from our loss.
Since then, I feel like I’ve been wrapped in a sort of silence that clangs.
Who was he?
Cole was the shape of community. Since arriving here in the mid-80s his presence on the Davidson College campus, in the neighborhood on Cathey Street, at a chair in Raeford’s, in the seats at Town Hall, at Barley Market for Monday Night Beer Club, and most recently at DHC’s Board table shaped the quality and integrity of life in Davidson.
He wasn’t easy. I think he would have told you that himself. He poked and prodded with all of the right questions, even when—especially when—those questions made you uncomfortable.
He drew lines with the answers his questions provoked. You knew instantly if he didn’t buy what you were selling.
He made you think.
And just when you thought the silence couldn’t get any more uncomfortable, he stood back to question his own thinking, offering time for the rest of us to locate ourselves as better thinkers.
He walked the perimeter of the lines he’d drawn and found a path around, or over, or under them. He kicked the tires of whatever he was selling.
And that was when he leveled you with that easy laugh—the one that confirmed he took the quality of the relationships he built more seriously than anything else.
All of that complexity made him one of the fiercest allies this town has ever had.
He expected us to stand up for each other. He demanded that we pry open doors that were otherwise slammed shut. He never waited until someone else decided to do the work.
Today, Cole’s many friends are holding each other up, even as we search for useful, purposeful ways to hold his family up.
At DHC, we’re grateful that Cole decided to gather us into his circle and into his sense of community.
It is that sense of community that makes it somewhat bearable to move forward in the deafening silence his absence creates.