Barbara Kleiner

Barbara Kleiner is a Minnesota girl who made good-in Utah, Iowa, Montana, Nevada, and Washington.

Her family moved from Minnesota to Utah when she was four and discovered that the only thing worse than not being a Mormon was not being anything, so they soon found the Unitarian Church. Her parents were the only ones from their families who went to college, which Barbara surmises may have been a liberalizing influence. They were both from Lutheran families but were Presbyterians in Minnesota, until her veterinarian father was transferred to Utah by the federal government to work for Cudahy as its meat inspector.

At Uintah Elementary School, her best friend was Bonnie Cummings. On Saturdays they would walk eight long blocks to the Tower Theater with 15 cents each for a ticket and some popcorn. Afterwards, they would walk another two blocks to Cummings Chocolates where Bonnie?s father would give them each two chocolates, and then walk the ten blocks home.

After graduation from East High School at age 16, Barbara went to live with her grandmother in Iowa and graduate from Iowa State Teachers College with a major in English and history. She taught junior high English and history for a year but missed the mountains and returned to Utah, where she went to work for the United States Geological Survey researching the definitive history of Lake Mead, which concluded that the lake would silt over soon after the turn of the century, and so the Glen Canyon dam was built.

Soon she met Ed Kleiner at a Unitarian Church dinner-"the only other person there under 50"-and they eventually married and had three children. Barbara stopped working from the time the first one was born until the last one was in school and then went to work part-time for Sam Weller at his bookstore on Main Street "and loved it." This lasted until Ed returned to school for a Ph.D. in botany and ecology, and a teaching position, at the University of Montana. He soon left for a tenured position at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, where Barbara made arrangements to work for both the Washoe County Parks and the Nevada State Fair at the same time "and loved it." Ed's and her careers collided and they divorced, but she soon earned a master"s degree at UNLV in school library media.

She got a "fabulous" job- "I really loved it"-at the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington, a brand new school for K-12, and worked for 13 years teaching college-bound English, world literature, and writing, and as the librarian. When her mother died in 1991, Barbara returned to Utah and took over the family home, where she still lives. Since then, she has been active in the Democratic Party, the history committee for the Unitarian Church, the League of Women Voters, a garden club, and perhaps her most important activity, volunteering at the Edison Elementary School library two days a week for the past two years. Recently she selected the 1200 books that are being donated by the Unitarian Church, which has adopted Edison for its special attention.

--Earl Wunderli