Gazette’s longtime office manager retires
As Texarkana Gazette Office Manager Janet Barnes closes out the books for the month of June, she is also closing a door on her nearly 48-year career with the newspaper.
Barnes is retiring after a career at the Gazette that began Dec. 5, 1966. Throughout her nearly 48 years on the job, she has been responsible for payroll, accounts payable and receiveable and all other business transactions.
She could have retired several years ago, but two things kept her on the job.
“I just enjoy the work,” she said. “And it’s just like my family. I will probably still be here pretty often.” Leaving is a bittersweet experience for her. “I enjoy all parts of my job, but it’s time to do something different. It’s time to let a younger person take over,” she said.
Barnes had worked two accounting jobs before the Gazette. She was looking for a new job when she read an ad in the paper for Gazette office manager. She has held that position ever since. “The title has not changed, but some of the methods of how we do things have,” Barnes said.
Buddy King, the Gazette’s recently retired general manager, has nothing but praise for Barnes. “Janet Barnes is one of the best business office managers I have ever worked with. I never had to worry about the business office. She kept the company in
“She is an allaround superstar to me.”
—Buddy King, former general manager
check, and she kept me in check,” King said.
King said when he became president of Palmer Newspapers, Barnes helped tutor business managers at other papers.
“She is an all-around superstar to me,” he said. “I’m proud she is joining the retirement group.”
Barnes was named Employee of the Year for Palmer Newspapers. Palmer Newspapers consists of the Texarkana Gazette and several other newspapers.
While serving with Texarkana Chamber of Commerce, she has won several Golden Scissors Awards for her dedication to ribbon-cutting duties for local business openings. She is a graduate of Leadership Texarkana and has served on several local boards.
Barnes also went to class at night while working days at the Gazette and earned her bachelor’s degree in accounting at East Texas State University-Texarkana.
In a business that has had many changes through the years, Barnes has been a stable force at the Gazette, Editor Les Minor said.
“One of Janet’s strongest attributes is a kind of stoic grace and calm that she carried with her,” Minor said. “Through changes in leadership, through changes in technology, through good times and bad, she has been a pillar of stability, dependability and reassurance. She is a good person in every way you can measure. She did her job and lives her life in such a way that her integrity and good intentions were impossible to question. It is the heart of her legacy,” Minor said.
Kirk Blair, general manager of the Gazette, first met Barnes in 1969 when he was a bag boy at A&P Grocery in Oaklawn Village.
“Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I would end up working with her at the Gazette,” Blair said. “She has watched me grow into the business, and we became close friends. It’s a unique sitiuation, because I met her when I was 16, and now she is retiring and I’m working with her as general manager. I will miss her a lot,” Blair said.
Blair said the Gazette employees, especially the business office employees, have been an extension of Barnes’ family throughout the years.
“These people are her family and have been her driving force,” he said.
Barnes was born in Kilgore, Texas, during the oil boom. Her father worked for a pipeline company.
“It was mud streets, clay streets and oil pumping,” she said. “We lived everywhere from Midland to Port Arthur.”
The family moved about every two years. Barnes was always changing schools, but she adjusted to change pretty well.
“It’s what you get used to,” she said.
She graduated from high school in Evant, Texas, near Waco and was living in Marshall, Texas, when she married. The couple moved to Shreveport and Bossier City, La., before settling down in Texarkana.
“My husband bought farmland in ‘57, and we moved up here,” she said.
She hopes to do some traveling after retirement. She also loves to read and plans to spend more time with her daughter, three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren
She serves as secretary/treasurer of her church, Apostolic Tabernacle United Pentecostal Church in Texarkana, Ark.