Barbara Valentine

Barbara Valentine has a heart for music

What do Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton have in common (besides having once called 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue home)? They all shook hands with Barbara Valentine. Even a young Ken Burns could be added to that list. The same hands she used to greet a veritable who’s who of celebrities also spent a lifetime bringing 88 keys to life. Music is the constant thread woven throughout the seasons of a full life that she is still enjoying. The fact that her birthday falls on February 14 and she married a “Valentine” is just one of the serendipitous circumstances of her life story.

Valentine, who now resides at Cypress Glen in Greenville, said she gives her mother credit for her early love of music: “She loved music–didn’t play an instrument or anything–but she sang around the house all the time, and so when I was a little girl, as far back as I can remember, she would say, ‘Oh, you’re going to take piano someday, because you’re so musical,’ because I could sing along with her.”

So when she was 7 years old, she started piano lessons–and loved it. Her mother never said, “You’ve got to practice.” She would say, “I just love that piece, Barbara. Play it again for me, please.”

She was Barbara Reynolds then, born in Dunn, but when she was 5 years old, the family moved to Fayetteville. While in high school she started working on Saturdays for a music store that sold Hammond organs.

She said: “A man came in one day and wanted to buy a Hammond organ for the small Methodist Church in Fayetteville, in memory of his mother who had passed away. So we sold him the organ, but they didn’t have anyone to play it. So he asked if I would take the job.”

She was 14 or 15 when she began playing every Sunday morning and night and for Wednesday night rehearsal, making about $40 a month. She took private organ lessons from her piano teacher.

At her Cypress Glen home. Photo by Donna Davis.

Since moving to Cypress Glen, Valentine said she met a kindred spirit in Frances Cain, who has a similar background, both playing for little churches while still in high school. Valentine went to Greensboro College, while Cain went to East Carolina. Greensboro College was a small Methodist girl’s school when Valentine was there and it became co-ed her senior year. She earned her teacher certificate as well as piano performance there.

After college she taught choral music in Greensboro middle schools for a couple of years, along with teaching some private lessons. In 1964 she and her husband and three children moved to Wilson. Barbara began singing with her children for a church program. Soon she was called upon to entertain for various civic groups, she met some other women, and they formed the Barbara Berry Singers.

The group ended up singing for 25 years, with members coming and going as life moves required.

Musician Steve Creech added some details on their LP J.C. Penney Presents the Barbara Berry Singers: “It was made in the ’70s and included the late Carolyn Powell, wife of the late Greenville banker Jerry Powell. The all female vocal and instrumental group performed throughout North Carolina and along the East Coast.”

While living in Wilson, Valentine coordinated the visiting artist program at Wilson Community College and was public information director. Governor James Hunt named her to the North Carolina Symphony Board as well as to the Tryon Palace Commission. She has also served as a trustee of Greensboro College and was named Distinguished Alumni.

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The Barbara Berra Singers

Barbara & Tim Valentine & Ronald Reagan

In 1987 Barbara Berry married United States Congressman Tim Valentine from Nashville, NC. In the story of her life, this started a new chapter involving frequent trips between Washington, D.C. and Nashville, where they were living when Congress was not in session. During this period, Valentine continued teaching piano lessons to many of the other congressmen’s children, when word got out about her talent.

Valentine has been a substitute organist in just about every denomination there is, and a small detail like moving to Cypress Glen in Greenville hasn’t changed that, or her love for music.

“I’m really playing more now than I have played in years,” she said, smiling, “because I’m playing for a violin student that’s a senior at ECU, “Theona Holler. She’s preparing for her senior recital before graduation, then on to graduate school in Boston.”

“I think not only does music keep you young,” she added, “I think it keeps you involved with young people.”

Sitting at her Steinway grand piano while a portrait of her younger self posed similarly stared back at her from across the room, she summarized her very full life where music was and still is the centerpiece through all of its distinct seasons: “It’s not what I do. It’s who I am.  I have played all my life and loved it.”

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