Gertrude A. Barber

Gertrude Agnes Barber was an American educator and administrator who founded the Barber Center in 1952 to serve disabled children, adults, and families.

Born in 1911, she was the child of an Irish immigrant mother and first-generation Irish-American father. She studied at Edinboro Normal School and Penn State University and worked in special education for the Erie School District. In 1952, she founded the Barber Center, which gradually expanded and eventually became known as the Barber National Institute.

Barber died in 2000 and her cause for sainthood in the Catholic Church was opened in 2019 by the Diocese of Erie. In 2020, she was named Erie's "woman of the century".