Remembering Barry McQuilken

Remarks by Gerard Kiley at Barry's funeral

RECOLLECTIONS OF BARRY

Doctor Hadi Barry McQuilken – now, there’s a couple of strange words in there - I wonder which one was more unexpected for most of us?

As I tried to put these notes together, I thought about that question a lot. And as I thought about a lifetime of, off-and-on, being around Barry – it began to dawn on me that neither “Hadi” or “Doctor” is really out of character for him.

If anything, I realized, Barry had taught a lot of us who knew him, or thought we knew him, to “expect the unexpected”.

I thought I might review some of my own memories of encountering Barry over the decades. It helped me come to grips with what a rare guy I've known for just about 50 years; and I hope it will give all here a little understanding, too.

My first memories of Barry come from hanging out at the McQuilken Manor on College Ave, in Somerville, probably around the later years of High School.

In the McQuilken house, there were, by my conservative estimate, 5 Bazillion comic books; and Barry was the little kid who was teaching himself to read by sitting in the middle of a pile of them and going back and forth between the Superman and Green Lantern stuff – contributed by George, and an infinite number of Archie and Jughead comics, contributed, if memory serves me correctly, by Joyce.

I remember he was touchy about getting help with words – he wanted to do it himself.

We used to play a lot of basketball in the McQuilken driveway; and almost as soon as Barry and Doug were old enough to shoot the ball halfway to the basket, they wanted to take part in pick-up games.

For a long time those games meant that Barry and Doug would bring somewhere between 5 and a couple of dozen of their neighborhood friends over to play a chaotic game between all of them and George and I.

It was always chaotic, and it was always intensely enthusiastic. And Barry and Doug kept getting bigger, taller, stronger; and George and I didn't . Well, at least we didn't get taller or stronger.

Those backyard games, after a few years, became some pretty intense games of two-on-two as Barry and Doug got into their teen-age years. And there finally came a point where they beat the two of us in a game.

I insisted it was a fluke, but Barry knew better; he was the one that suggested we should divide up the games by pairing one of the young guys with one of the old-timers.

Looking back on it, I can see now the early instinct for tact and diplomacy that later made him such a pain in-the-ass to negotiate with.

By the way, both Barry and Doug went on to have very good high school basketball careers at St. Clement’s in the mid-sixties. I went to a number of their games; and over the years

I've always sort of wondered which of the three – Barry, Doug, or George – was actually the second best McQuilken ever to play for St. Clements.

Joyce, of course, was the highest scoring, most dominant McQuilken “roundball” talent by any standard I can think of.

Here again, though, I see a little of the Barry I came to know years later. He was the classic example of the guy who didn't have the most talent, but who worked the hardest, even when it didn't look like he was working that hard.

Of course, the other thing I remember from those early years is that he could make an awful lot of noise on the family piano, and he seemed to enjoy it. I'm not so sure that others did at that point, however.

One last note about those days – his mother Thelma really loved him! God help you if you said anything about Barry. She really stuck up for him.

I think that’s maybe that’s where a lot of that eventual self-confidence came from.

One last note on the St. Clement years – Thelma, on more than one occasion, told me that both Barry and Doug had to take some grief from the nuns with long memories. They let the lads know that they once had George in class, and they weren't going to put up with any of that “McQuilken stuff” from them!

I didn't see much of Barry during his college years, or even the first few years after that. I guess he studied physics at U. Lowell; and he played the piano a lot. He drove a cab for a while.

George has already covered the Somerville Public Access Cable TV years. I wish we still had the tapes. I guess all I can say is that the biggest surprise for me would have been if Barry had gone on to a big-time career in TV.

I did love the fact that the “Dead Air” cable TV conspirators held their “planning” sessions at the Rosebud Café in Davis Square.

One time during those days, Barry’s mom said to me “I'm not worried about Barry, he’s going to surprise everyone one of these days”. I didn't know what to make of her follow-on remark – “ Your mother probably says the same thing about you”.

Well, Barry did surprise a lot of us – he enrolled in the MBA program at BC. During his first year there, I ran into him at a party given by one of the faculty.

I soon observed that Barry was there with his own kind of MBA “posse” – they were mostly women students from the program.

And everybody wanted to talk with Barry – he seemed very comfortable with his new persona as a management guru.

When he graduated from BC, he went to work for Digital in Southern California. I didn't really see him again until he joined George and I at Language Technology in 1984.

Put simply, he was our top sales guy - something you could hear about him any number of times after that from people who worked with him later.

But more importantly, working for Language Technology brought Barry back to the area on a regular basis. And these were the “Marblehead years” when it seemed like there was a social event of some sort every week-end, if not every night.

Both George and I noticed that after a while, whenever we called someone (usually a woman) about a party or gala event, somewhere in the conversation we'd get the inevitable question “Is Barry going to be there?”

It got kind of tiring – if not ego-deflating, but I think it motivated both of us to push Barry to move back East and buy a house in Marblehead – we knew it would only help our social lives.

And move back he did! And he did it California-style, putting a fairly massive Hot Tub out on his balcony. Lots of folks soaked there – but those tales aren't for telling in Church – even a Unitarian one!

And here’s another California trait – in those days we used to play a lot of tennis in Marblehead – and when we'd go back to Barry’s house afterwards – there'd be nothing in the refrigerator except bottled water, tofu, and leafy green stuff!

It was disgusting!

Eventually, we taught him to at least stock in some beer. I think we told him that women would appreciate it.

The years that followed showed that Barry really was a wanderer, an explorer, a searcher. He lived in Paris – I forget which company benefited from that. He moved to Singapore. He spent a lot of time in places like Japan, Indonesia, and Australia.

He learned to meditate – he learned a lot about Eastern medicine and Eastern thought, and about other religions.

And he never made fun at, or scoffed at any of these things.

He kept exploring – he kept learning – and he loved doing it.

He kept learning about technology and business, too. He wasn't at all put off by the simple fact that something was “new”.

When I was at TruExchange, just a few years ago, I asked Barry to give me a little local overview of the East Asian commodity exchanges.

Barry promptly sent back a complete market analysis, including executive profiles, IT spending patterns, and issues they were having with trading derivatives.

I was, needless to say, very impressed. Of course, I didn't know that Barry was in his Doctoral program in Finance at the University of Perth, and that he was thinking about doing his thesis on some esoteric topic like “the behavior of Derivatives on Asian stock markets”.

Of course, about a week later, he sent me his proposal for a consulting contract that would make him the TruExchange “go to” guy in Asia.

The terms were outrageous, but life had taught me that that was where you began bargaining with Barry – he was very good at it. And even though I had almost a decade on him, once again, I was learning from him.

One other common theme – whenever he returned to this area, there were lots of people who wanted to see him again. For a guy who traveled so much, and who was away from here for such long stretches, he didn't seem to burn many bridges.

Of course that kind of shy, wry smile, and the persistent twinkle in his eyes didn't hurt him at all either.

I thought about that after I saw him the last time – in Brigham & Women’s - before the chemo sessions began. He was weak and in some real discomfort – but he still had that little smile, and some of that twinkle in his eyes, as he made a small joke about parking meters in Asia.

Of course, I promised him the territory right there on the spot.

I'll never know if it was just his subtle sense of humor kicking in – or was he just negotiating with me again?

So that’s about it. He was a seeker, a guy with respect for ideas, a guy who loved music, a guy who always seemed to enjoy the company of others, but who also kept to himself.

He loved Shifa very much, I know he loved his family. I'm proud he was my friend.

When we were at the graveyard ceremony on Monday, Laura commented afterwards that there were some real similarities between the Islamic prayers we heard and the Catholic ones we learned growing up.

In reference to the deceased, she noted that each culture uses the prayerful request: “let perpetual light shine upon him”

I think that smile and that eye twinkle of Barry’s is still out there somewhere – and he is – I think – a little bit of “perpetual light” shining on us right now.

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