The Very Rev. Herbert Barrall, former dean of Denver’s St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral, died in Salem, Ore., on June 10. He was 86.
Barrall “was a loving pastor who almost never showed his temper and treated everyone alike — it didn’t matter their status,” said Nancy Woodward, the cathedral archivist.
He wanted to be a priest “from an early age,” said his son, Mark Barrall of Salem. “He just understood that about himself.”
He called his father an “honest, ethical, straight-shooting guy.”
Barrall had many interests outside the church. He re-built and enlarged a rundown cabin near Buena Vista and “could fix anything around the house,” said Mark Barrall. He loved to hunt and fish.
Herbert Barrall, his wife, Grace, and their children traveled coast to coast in their Airstream trailer, said their daughter, Terry Barrall of Salem.
Recalling her father’s patience, Terry Barrall said her father “had a calming way with people through the highs and lows of their lives.”
She sometimes tested that patience. She once brought a “bullfrog the size of a dinner plate” into the trailer and her dad let her keep it a few days, finally convincing her the frog would prefer being elsewhere.
“The trips were always an education. I think my father wanted us to grow up to be real people,” Terry Barrall said.
Herbert M. Barrall was born in Nanticoke, Pa., on Feb. 1, 1922, and graduated from Hobart College in Geneva, N.Y. He earned a theology degree from Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Va., and was ordained in 1946.
The same year, he married Grace Bagshaw. She survives him.
He was a priest on the staff at St. John’s from 1959 to 1963, when he became dean. He left Denver in 1980.
Barrall served at churches in Connecticut, Ohio, New York, Illinois and Oregon, and continued to assist parishes in western Oregon after his retirement when he was 80. Even after that, he took communion to people in retirement communities.
In addition to his wife, daughter and son, he is survived by another daughter, Sara Barrall Britton of Salem; six grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
