Photographer and student of hawks

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Barry Lavery was a student of hawks, a fitting affinity for a photographer. But he had so much more than a great eye and focus. When people who knew him talk about him, they speak about his kindness, his passion, his mentoring.

“His lovely Irish wit,” said longtime friend, Martha Rial, who studied photography at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh when he was an administrator there.

Mr. Lavery, a photography instructor for 32 of his 37 years at the AIP, died Aug. 22 in his home in Regent Square. He had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He was 72.

One of his many students who became professional photographers, Melanie Friend, recalls camping trips, a class visit from an owl and a trip to the morgue.

“That was my favorite, the field trip to the morgue to see crime scene photography,” she said. “You always wanted to hear his critique, and after class he would sit and [talk] with us about life.”

“He’s the reason I became a teacher,” his wife Katyna said. “Because for years there were [former students] in and outof our house who wouldn’t let go of him. He went out of his way for people, beyond whathe had to do.”

A practitioner of Buddhism for the past 40 years, Mr. Lavery was an environmentalist, an outdoorsman who loved nature and a volunteer for 16 years at the Humane Animal Rescue Wildlife Center in Verona.

“He would go into the wildlife center” beyond his volunteer hours “because baby birds have to be fed every 20 minutes,” Ms. Lavery said. “I called him a naturalist because he did become a bird expert.

“He loved animals his whole life,” she said. “He trained people in how to handle hawks. He took a sabbatical in Utah and studied hawks working with the Bureau of Land Management, documenting nests, monitoring their populations. He gave a lot of money to environmental causes.”

JillArgall was an intern at the wildlife center, working Saturdays when Mr. Lavery volunteered there. Now the director, she remembers “my first day, when I was assigned to clean the cage of a red-tailed hawk and I was terrified. He saw me very upset and talked me through it: Don’t touch it; keep your eyes down. I had a soft spot forhim” from then on.

“Barry was one of those guys who knew everybody,” saidMs. Rial, who won a Pulitzer Prize when she was a staff photographer at the Post-Gazette. “He was a connector, very social, outgoing. He had such a presence, and he encouraged me when I was doing student work. He made methink, ‘Oh! I can do this.’ ”

Ms. Lavery said her husband had many visitors in the last years of his life, many of them students from 20 or 30 years ago. “So many people loved him and have told me ‘He’s soaring like a hawk now.’ ”

A native of Gary, Ind., Mr. Lavery studied at Temple University and Westminster College, from which he received a bachelor of arts in philosophy in 1966.

Besides his wife, he is survived by three daughters, Sarah Lash of Aurora, Colo., Kerri Cline of Murrysville and Maggie Lavery of Raleigh, N.C.. Friends are asked to join a memorial gathering at 12:30 p.m. for a 1 p.m. service on Sept. 10 at the SGI Buddhist Center, 2121 Noblestown Road.