One of the last of a generation of characters who moved to St. John in the 1970s and early 1980s has died. June Bell Barlas, who owned Tradewinds newspaper and the legendary Out bar, died Sept. 12 at Roy L. Schneider Hospital on St. Thomas. She was 80.
Long-time resident Lonnie Willis said Barlas “was a fascinating person. She had a lot of energy and was always doing something.”
Albert Willis said that Barlas, like most of the transplants to St. John who arrived decades ago, was looking for a different kind of life.
“It’s a sad passing,” he said of her death.
Born in Cambridge, Mass., to Scottish immigrants, Bell went to work at a Boston insurance company right out of high school. Married at 22, with her two children coming along soon after, she and her family trekked off to Venezuela so her husband could work in the oil industry. While in Venezuela, she opened a day care center.
After her marriage ended, Barlas got a public relations job that involved time in Puerto Rico. While living there, she and a co-worker, Susan Larsen, first visited St. John thanks to another co-worker, Susan Safer. Safer was a congressman’s daughter who invited her friends on a trip to the Virgin Islands.
"Of course, I fell in love with the island as everyone does on a first visit," Barlas said in a 2005 interview with the Source about moving to St. John.
Barlas soon got a job working at Julius E. Sprauve School’s summer program. When summer ended, Barlas signed on with the late Doris Jadan’s Environmental Studies Program. While her main job was in the office, Barlas also got to go on trips with Jadan and the students.
She moved on to operate what she called the Inn, located in the building that currently houses the St. John Inn. The Inn was a hot spot in the mid 1970s, with people from across St. John society gathering to share in the fun.
In the 2005 interview (see link below), Barlas said that, in those days, St. John was more democratic with relationships based on how good a story you could tell and your sense of humor.
"It didn’t have anything to do with money or prestige or color," she said.
After she left the Inn, she worked for Sis Frank and Peter Griffith at Holiday Homes. Griffith, who died some years back, was movie star Melanie Griffith’s father.
After her children told her they weren’t learning much at Sprauve School, Barlas started her own school with her children, two of Griffith’s children and a scholarship student who lived at the Baptist Church’s Boy’s Ranch off Centerline Road as the pupils, she said in the interview.
Barlas and Toni Oppenheimer, who also worked at Holiday Homes and whose father was Robert Oppenheimer of atomic bomb fame, decided to open a bar called the Out, located where Mongoose Junction now stands. Barlas operated the Out until 1980.
“The Out was a far more popular place than anything since, even Woody’s,” said former resident Charlie Benbow, referring to a busy St. John bar. “She had to be tough to keep things from getting out of hand there.”
Barlas hooked up with Bill Shaw, who became her life partner, after she bought the Tradewinds newspaper. Shaw took over the newspaper duties while Barlas worked at the Battery for then administrator Noble Samuel.
When work began on the Virgin Grand Hotel, later the Hyatt Regency Hotel and now the Westin Resort, near where Barlas lived, the noise and mosquitoes made her long for cooler climates. She sold Tradewinds to Don Oat and moved with Shaw in 1986 to Maine. After two years there, they moved on to the Hawaiian island of Maui, where Barlas lived with Shaw until his death in April 1996.
After returning to St. John in November 1996, Barlas started “St. John Times” in April 1997. She sold it and it became the “Sun Times.” That paper recently folded.
In her last years, Barlas lived with her son, Andrew, his wife, Lori, and their children, Andrew and Benjamin. Another son, Morgan Barlas, also lives on St. John.
Information on a planned memorial service will be held in the future.
