Remembering George W. Barber Jr., Founding father of Barber Classic Motorsports Museum

Visiting the Barber Classic Motorsports Museum simply exterior of Birmingham, Alabama, is a pilgrimage for a lot of motorcyclists. Wandering by the world’s largest bike museum simply takes a full day, and even then you possibly can’t presumably take in all of it. And simply exterior the museum’s home windows is the undulating asphalt and rolling inexperienced hills of the Barber Motorsports Park that hosts bike and automobile occasions all year long. Mr. Barber was a visionary and a beneficiant philanthropist, and the world is a darker place with out him in it.

The next obituary and images have been distributed by the Barber Classic Motorsports Museum.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (February 18, 2026) — George W. Barber, Jr., founding father of the Barber Classic Motorsports Museum and Barber Motorsports Parkdied peacefully on Sunday, February 15, following a short sickness. He was 85 years outdated.

Following commencement from Auburn College, Barber enlisted within the Alabama Air Nationwide Guard, serving six years with the 117th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing. He took the helm of Barber Dairies at age 29, guiding it into a number one supplier within the area.

Barber’s legendary aggressive drive first manifested on the racetrack, the place he dominated the Southeastern sports-car circuit. With 63 victories to his identify, George was thought to be a number one expertise of his period, buying and selling paint with the likes of Dan Gurney and Peter Gregg.

Motorsports remained a driving drive all through his life. After the sale of Barber Dairies in 1998, Barber merged his varied ventures to centralize the administration of his numerous investments. Within the Nineteen Eighties, he envisioned a strategy to give again to Alabama by this lifelong curiosity.

As we speak, the Barber Classic Motorsports Museum homes the world’s largest assortment of bikes and Lotus race automobiles. When the gathering reached 1,000 autos, Barber was requested if they need to cease. “Heck, no,” he replied. “We’ll hold going.’”

Positioned within the southeast nook of the 880-acre campus — larger than New York Metropolis’s Central Park — the museum is a 230,000-square-foot architectural marvel, a world hub for restoration, preservation, design, and training, inspiring greater than 4,000 college students yearly.

Typically described because the “Augusta Nationwide of Racing,” Barber Motorsports Park was born from Barber’s mandate to create “a botanical backyard with a racetrack in it.” The museum and park are thought of the most important single philanthropic mission by a person in Alabama historical past.

Barber’s affect on training and environmental conservation is profound. He funded greater than 500 full-tuition faculty scholarships and constructed a tradition of mutual care and loyalty, persistently stepping in to assist his workers and mates throughout occasions of want.

“Everybody who visits the museum and park has their very own relationship with Mr. Barber,” mentioned Government Director Brian Case. “What we now share is the affect he had on our lives and accountability we stock to honor his imaginative and prescient, generosity, and perception in what this place may very well be.”