Acclaimed psychiatrist Dr. James T. Barter reflects on the support that shaped his successful life.
“THE MOST IMPORTANT THING THAT HAPPENED TO ME IN MY CHILDHOOD IS THAT I BECAME A BURGLAR AND A THIEF,” reveals Dr. James T. Barter, M.D., in his memoir.
If he hadn’t, a benevolent lawyer wouldn’t have argued that the 13-year-old James and his two friends should be tried as children, not as adults, for a series of break ins and thefts in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Nor would he have come into the care of The Home. That watershed moment was one of a few “inflection points in my life,” he says, looking back. “A time when things change in ways that were incomprehensible before.” Dr. James Barter is now a retired psychiatrist who feels fortunate to have had a distinguished, decades-long medical career, a 68-year marriage to his wife, Eloise, and devoted kids and grandkids in stable, loving families. At the age of 95, he is sharing his story because he believes he’s a living example of The Home’s mission, which is to help children build permanent, positive change.
For him, change came when he “got into and out of trouble,” he says, for the latest and largest of his transgressions on the coastal peninsula. His crimes were born of poverty and a desire to stay away from the three-room shack in the Back River woods where he, his mother, and five half-siblings were living with their abusive stepfather. The shanty had no running water or electricity, broken windows, punched-in walls, and two old stoves whose meager heat drifted towards the sky, not the children. It was an isolated setting three miles from the one-room schoolhouse and three more from town.
James grew up not knowing his father, and his mother, who had multiple marriages and her share of troubles, was secretive and deeply unhappy. When he wasn’t in school, James was on the wharves, unattended. He fished from a young age, made money doing odd jobs, and, as his plight worsened, he turned to shoplifting.
Keenly intelligent and crafty, at age 12, James discovered he could slip into the basement storeroom under the Maine Trading Post building. Rather than trudging the six miles home to sleep five to a bed, he fashioned a corner hideout from cardboard boxes where he could sleep warmly and safely. James shared his discovery with his two friends. In 1943, on Halloween weekend, the hungry boys broke into a diner to bring a feast back to their den and stole $200 from a local garage. James planned to use the money to fund a new life as a merchant marine. Instead, after a court hearing and thorough evaluation, he landed in the care of The Home, where he would be observed and offered “an opportunity for rehabilitation.”
From that point on, The Home’s headquarters in Jamaica Plain became home base until James was 24 years old. When he arrived, he met psychiatrist Dr. Florence Clothier Wislocki, who had a profound effect on him and his life, and social workers Bertram Greenwood and Louise Fisher, who saw to it that his needs were met. He was fed, received dental and medical care, was fitted with glasses, and tutored to make up for classwork he had missed. “I think some of them saw potential that I didn’t know I had,” he reveals. James had a small room by the nursery and saw Dr. Wislocki every week, sometimes more. She was brilliant and warm and would often play games with James. “I’d come in and sit and talk,” he recalls. “I just thought she liked the stories I told. I certainly didn’t feel it was therapy, though it most certainly was.”
At the end of James’ three-month evaluation period, returning to Maine wasn’t an option. His family was disintegrating—his stepfather abandoned his mother, and her children entered foster care. Dr. Wislocki, who knew James’ aptitude, encouraged him to consider The Woodstock Country School in Vermont, the boarding school where her son was going. She gave James agency over his choices, and the same opportunities she extended to her own family. “When I needed direction in my life, The Home provided that direction,” he explains. James went, and his years at Woodstock were a revelation. “I was exposed to literature, classical music, fine arts, languages, history, theater, science and politics,” he says, appreciatively. The experience sparked his innate intellect and expanded his worldview. “Woodstock started me in a direction that led to college, graduate school, medical school, and a career as a psychiatrist. This didn’t happen all at once; it was a gradual process of experience and taking advantage of the opportunities offered to me.”
During school vacations, James returned to Jamaica Plain. He had a room at The Home, where he kept his belongings, and could come and go as he pleased. The staff did what parents do. They worried when he hitchhiked, helped him find summer jobs (including one at Harvard Medical School, working for Dr. Wislocki’s husband, George), took him to buy a suit for graduation, and, James suspects, helped fund his education beyond the agency’s commitment. Above all, they believed in him.
“The support I got from The Home made a real difference,” offers James. He was among the first in his family to graduate from high school and pursue higher education. He attended Antioch College in Ohio and headed west to earn his master’s degree in anthropology at the University of Arizona, where he met Eloise. The two married, started a family, and James went on to medical school to become a physician and adolescent psychiatrist. He has enjoyed a long, illustrious career helping others, filled with prolific contributions to his field, and service on medical boards and associations.
“For me, The Home was the thing that allowed me to become the person I became. I have no illusions about that at all,” says James. “I cannot even contemplate what my life would have been like if I hadn’t had that experience.”
