Wallace Barnes

Wallace Barnes (March 22, 1926 – December 10, 2020) was the chairman and chief executive officer of Barnes Group, Inc., a global manufacturer of aerospace and industrial components. The company's symbol is "B" on the New York Stock Exchange.

Barnes was a former member of the Connecticut State Senate, a Connecticut gubernatorial candidate, and Bristol, Connecticut Republican town chairman. He practiced law and served on numerous public and private company boards. He was a delegate to eight national GOP conventions.

A graduate of Williams College and Yale Law School, he was married to Barbara Hackman Franklin, former US Secretary of Commerce. They resided in Bristol, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C. Barnes is a member of the Barnes family, the first settlers of Bristol.

Early life and family

Barnes was born in Bristol, Connecticut, to Lillian (née Houbertz) and Harry Clarke Barnes as one of four children. He was named after his grandfather, Wallace Barnes, the founder of the Barnes Group in 1857, and is a direct descendant of Ebenezer Barnes, who became the first permanent settler of Bristol in 1728. His grandfather, Wallace Barnes, was born in 1827 and worked at his Bristol family store as a druggist and later as a clock-maker for several firms. When one firm went bankrupt, they offered the elder Barnes his back wages in the form of hoop skirt wire. The elder Barnes then sold the hoop skirt wire for over $1,500 and started his own business manufacturing hoops and steel springs in 1857; later, in 1859, he continued solely with springs when the hoop-skirt demand declined. This manufacturing company proved to be the beginnings of the Barnes Group. Barnes graduated Phi Beta Kappa, cum laude, from Williams College in 1949 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics, serving as class vice president.

After graduating, he went to Yale University and graduated with an LL.B. degree in 1952, and served as a member of the editorial board of the Yale Law Journal.

Career

Flying

Barnes became a licensed pilot in his teenage years. He was a professional Airline Transport Pilot with a type rating in the Cessna Citation and the Lear 23-24 Series. He owned a plane, which was stored in his Connecticut home. In 1949, while at Williams, Barnes founded Nutmeg Air Transport Inc., a charter airline, and served as its president until 1955.

The Barnes Group

From 1952 to 1962, Barnes, a member of the American Bar Association and the Connecticut Bar Association, worked as a partner in Beach, Calder & Barnes in Bristol.

After retiring as CEO, Barnes continued to serve as chairman until he left the board due to age limitations in 1996. He had served on the board since 1963 as chair of the management development committee and as a member of the executive committee and the committee on board directors.

In April 1969, the Connecticut Senate Republicans were angered by the Democratic Senators for convening private meetings or caucuses that lasted until 4:00 pm or 6:00 pm, despite the Senate being supposed to convene altogether at 2:00 pm each day. At the time, the Democrats outnumbered the Republicans 24 to 12. On Wednesday, April 23, the Republicans began banging their shoes on their desks in protest after the Democratic majority emerged from a private caucus several hours late, mirroring Nikita Khrushchev's shoe-banging incident at the United Nations in 1960. On Thursday, April 24, Barnes placed his right boot on his desk "as a symbol of the protest."

The culmination of this symbolic protest was on Tuesday, May 6, 1969, when the Republicans placed several hundred pairs of shoes on the sidewalk in front of the state capitol. While Barnes was not present for this incident, a research assistant and secretary from his staff were involved in the demonstration. The shoes were eventually donated.

From 1966 to 1967, he served on the Governor's Clean Water Task Force and the Governor's Committee for Equal Employment Opportunity.

In 1970, Barnes ran against Thomas J. Meskill for the Republican nomination for governor in Connecticut. Before the August 1970 primary, Meskill was the Republican convention-endorsed candidate. Barnes was later defeated in the primary. In 2004, when Meskill died, Barnes remarked in his obituary that the two were friends before the primary and remained so for long afterward.

Barnes was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1956, 1958, 1960, 1964, 1988, 1992, 2004, and 2008.

Civic and corporate career

Barnes has served on the boards of numerous public and private companies. In 1962, Barnes began serving as a Bristol Board of Finance member for three years. That same year, he was also on the executive committee of the Connecticut Regional Import-Export Council. Barnes became president of the Bristol Boys and Girls Club in 1965 and served until 1968, when he became an honorary director. In 1956, he served as president of the Bristol Community Chest.

Barnes has also been a director of nearly twenty companies and groups, including the Metro Hartford Chamber of Commerce, the Manufacturer's Association of Hartford (and was also president from 1965 to 1968), the Automobile Insurance Company of Hartford, the Loctite Corporation, the Rogers Corporation, and many others. He was a director of Rohr, Inc. from 1988 to 1998, where he served as chair from 1994 to 1998 and as chair of the Tradewind Turbines Corporation from 1994 to 1998.

In 1971, Barnes joined the board of directors of the Aetna Life and Casualty Company, a holding company of the Aetna Life Insurance Company. He served on the board until 1996. In 1984, he met fellow director Barbara Hackman Franklin and invited her to a corporate function; the two were married two years later. When Franklin later became Secretary of Commerce in 1992, she had to "recuse herself from decisions on the auto and aircraft parts industries because her husband's family business, the Barnes Group, is a manufacturer of car and aircraft parts."

Awards

In 1955, the Jaycees honored Barnes as the "Outstanding Young Man of the Year". In 1967, the Boys Club of America gave Barnes the "Keystone Award", which recognizes leadership and service.