In writing just a few weeks in the past concerning the architect Eric Kebbon and the medieval-style citadel he constructed within the Thirties on the far jap finish of Fishers Island, referred to as “White Caps,” I inadvertently omitted mentioning one of many comparatively current house owners of the turret-and-gable edifice, which included the unscrupulous enterprise associate of George Harrison, the late member of the Beatles.
The guy I did not checklist was Jonathan Barres, then of Stonington, as soon as one of many extra high-flying property partnership moguls on this area through the high-rolling actual property increase of the Eighties.
A number of years earlier than Barres died, at age 58 in 2008, I traveled to Florida, the place he was residing together with his spouse, Pauline, and 6 kids, in Ormond Seaside, to write down about Barres’ late life and whole-hearted devotion to Jesus.
Barres, who was raised in Ormond Seaside, the son of an ordained Congregational minister with a level from Yale Divinity Faculty, was sturdily constructed and a very good athlete, a champion wrestler on the Salisbury Faculty, in Litchfield County, in Connecticut, and on the College of Florida.
Pauline Denis was raised in Norwich, the daughter of French Canadians who moved to Daytona Seaside, Fla., when she was 6, and it was in Florida that she met Barres, who grew up close by.
Jonathan and Pauline Barres got here north after he graduated with a level in structure and a grasp’s in development administration. He labored for Stone and Webster in New London after which turned a inventory dealer with Advest and later Paine and Webber.
With a pal, David Kleeman, from prep faculty days, and different Barres members of the family, Barres started placing collectively funding partnerships to buy a number of residence complexes and different properties, using the true property increase of the early ’80s.
To handle the holdings, he and Kleeman fashioned Coastal Administration, with places of work in Mystic, alongside their different firm, Barres, Kleeman Inc.
After I visited Barres in Florida, in 2005, he stated his private wealth in these increase days was round $25 million.
When the true property bubble burst within the late ’80s and into the Nineteen Nineties, the Barres empire, together with banks that had made too many dangerous mortgages, collapsed, and Barres misplaced the majority of his fortune. He declared chapter in 2002 and left Stonington for Florida. What remained of his property right here was a restored historic 18th-century dwelling on Water Avenue in Stonington borough, which he finally offered.
John Fiore, an in depth pal and enterprise affiliate and, like Barres, a significant benefactor of Pine Level Faculty, the non-public day faculty in Stonington, helped Barres in coping with banks and doing monetary exercises.
Barres stated his remaining years in Stonington buried him in despair, not solely financially.
“I used to be spiritually useless,” he instructed me in 2005. “When the tumor hit, I used to be virtually suicidal.”
A grapefruit-sized benign tumor had been discovered on the base of his cranium, wrapped round his mind stem, in 2001. It was the identical yr his 94-year-old mom died.
“I used to be all enthusiastic about making a living. From the age 12 on, all I wished was to earn cash. I had boats and homes, a citadel on Fishers Island. I had numerous companions, numerous completely different companies, and I had nothing. I went by way of hell. I went by way of the entire fallout of the Eighties. And when the banks failed, they referred to as your loans, and we had lots of of hundreds of thousands in loans.”
The citadel — White Caps — was constructed for the Simmons household, then the nation’s main producers of mattresses, together with the signature Magnificence Relaxation. The citadel is owned at present by the William L. Hanley household of Greenwich, Conn., and Fishers Island.
Barres, by 2005, had undergone revolutionary therapy for the tumor on the Massachusetts Normal Hospital’s Northeast Proton Remedy Middle — a month of every day therapies designed to bombard the borders of the tumor with exact radiation remedy to kill any cell progress, but additionally limiting the hazard to Barres’ eye and cognitive skills. He additionally was on a course of anti-seizure medicine.
Nonetheless, he insisted his salvation was being born once more, which coincided together with his mom’s loss of life and the invention of the tumor. He was then 51.
“My failure, the whole lack of all the pieces, was the beginning of victory,” he instructed me. “I completely surrendered. I made contact with the Lord in a giant manner. He introduced me out of all the pieces. I attempted to earn cash my god … I by no means hung out with God. By Jesus, I’ve gone from defeat to everlasting victory. I’m on a non secular journey.”
After I visited, Barres was a member of the Calvary Christian Middle, a Pentecostal church in Ormond Seaside, modern in design and constructed to accommodate 1,000 worshippers. The entire Barres household was concerned within the church, and Jonathan, a member of the 100-voice church choir, spent a minimum of 4 hours in church each Sunday and, as others instructed me, was identified to weep as he sang.
By his personal account, and that of the church pastor, he had been fairly beneficiant to Calvary Christian Middle.
He stated he devoted a lot of his day and being to Jesus, communing with Jesus from the time he woke lengthy earlier than daybreak, and even asking his Savior for recommendation about which actual property offers to make. His dwelling then was a $3 million, 12,000-square-foot oceanfront home with 4 vehicles, together with a BMW, a Lincoln and a Lexus SUV.
“When the Lord didn’t declare me throughout my seizures and tumor, I stated: ‘God, what would you like me to do?’ I started to hunt Him, very passionately,” Barres stated. “The fruit of what I’m doing with the Lord is my marriage being higher than it ever was, my kids not on the malls or on medicine, everybody in good well being. I wish to give all of them I’ve.”
After we visited, he had gone three months with out taking his post-tumor, anti-seizure medication, placing, as he stated, his well being within the arms of the Lord.
He died three years later, surrounded by his household, in Ormond Seaside.
Steven Slosberg lives in Stonington and could also be reached at maayan72@aol.com.
In writing just a few weeks in the past concerning the architect Eric Kebbon and the medieval-style citadel he constructed within the Thirties on the far jap finish of Fishers Island, referred to as “White Caps,” I inadvertently omitted mentioning one of many comparatively current house owners of the turret-and-gable edifice, which included the unscrupulous enterprise associate of George Harrison, the late member of the Beatles.
The guy I did not checklist was Jonathan Barres, then of Stonington, as soon as one of many extra high-flying property partnership moguls on this area through the high-rolling actual property increase of the Eighties.
A number of years earlier than Barres died, at age 58 in 2008, I traveled to Florida, the place he was residing together with his spouse, Pauline, and 6 kids, in Ormond Seaside, to write down about Barres’ late life and whole-hearted devotion to Jesus.
Barres, who was raised in Ormond Seaside, the son of an ordained Congregational minister with a level from Yale Divinity Faculty, was sturdily constructed and a very good athlete, a champion wrestler on the Salisbury Faculty, in Litchfield County, in Connecticut, and on the College of Florida.
Pauline Denis was raised in Norwich, the daughter of French Canadians who moved to Daytona Seaside, Fla., when she was 6, and it was in Florida that she met Barres, who grew up close by.
Jonathan and Pauline Barres got here north after he graduated with a level in structure and a grasp’s in development administration. He labored for Stone and Webster in New London after which turned a inventory dealer with Advest and later Paine and Webber.
With a pal, David Kleeman, from prep faculty days, and different Barres members of the family, Barres started placing collectively funding partnerships to buy a number of residence complexes and different properties, using the true property increase of the early ’80s.
To handle the holdings, he and Kleeman fashioned Coastal Administration, with places of work in Mystic, alongside their different firm, Barres, Kleeman Inc.
After I visited Barres in Florida, in 2005, he stated his private wealth in these increase days was round $25 million.
When the true property bubble burst within the late ’80s and into the Nineteen Nineties, the Barres empire, together with banks that had made too many dangerous mortgages, collapsed, and Barres misplaced the majority of his fortune. He declared chapter in 2002 and left Stonington for Florida. What remained of his property right here was a restored historic 18th-century dwelling on Water Avenue in Stonington borough, which he finally offered.
John Fiore, an in depth pal and enterprise affiliate and, like Barres, a significant benefactor of Pine Level Faculty, the non-public day faculty in Stonington, helped Barres in coping with banks and doing monetary exercises.
Barres stated his remaining years in Stonington buried him in despair, not solely financially.
“I used to be spiritually useless,” he instructed me in 2005. “When the tumor hit, I used to be virtually suicidal.”
A grapefruit-sized benign tumor had been discovered on the base of his cranium, wrapped round his mind stem, in 2001. It was the identical yr his 94-year-old mom died.
“I used to be all enthusiastic about making a living. From the age 12 on, all I wished was to earn cash. I had boats and homes, a citadel on Fishers Island. I had numerous companions, numerous completely different companies, and I had nothing. I went by way of hell. I went by way of the entire fallout of the Eighties. And when the banks failed, they referred to as your loans, and we had lots of of hundreds of thousands in loans.”
The citadel — White Caps — was constructed for the Simmons household, then the nation’s main producers of mattresses, together with the signature Magnificence Relaxation. The citadel is owned at present by the William L. Hanley household of Greenwich, Conn., and Fishers Island.
Barres, by 2005, had undergone revolutionary therapy for the tumor on the Massachusetts Normal Hospital’s Northeast Proton Remedy Middle — a month of every day therapies designed to bombard the borders of the tumor with exact radiation remedy to kill any cell progress, but additionally limiting the hazard to Barres’ eye and cognitive skills. He additionally was on a course of anti-seizure medicine.
Nonetheless, he insisted his salvation was being born once more, which coincided together with his mom’s loss of life and the invention of the tumor. He was then 51.
“My failure, the whole lack of all the pieces, was the beginning of victory,” he instructed me. “I completely surrendered. I made contact with the Lord in a giant manner. He introduced me out of all the pieces. I attempted to earn cash my god … I by no means hung out with God. By Jesus, I’ve gone from defeat to everlasting victory. I’m on a non secular journey.”
After I visited, Barres was a member of the Calvary Christian Middle, a Pentecostal church in Ormond Seaside, modern in design and constructed to accommodate 1,000 worshippers. The entire Barres household was concerned within the church, and Jonathan, a member of the 100-voice church choir, spent a minimum of 4 hours in church each Sunday and, as others instructed me, was identified to weep as he sang.
By his personal account, and that of the church pastor, he had been fairly beneficiant to Calvary Christian Middle.
He stated he devoted a lot of his day and being to Jesus, communing with Jesus from the time he woke lengthy earlier than daybreak, and even asking his Savior for recommendation about which actual property offers to make. His dwelling then was a $3 million, 12,000-square-foot oceanfront home with 4 vehicles, together with a BMW, a Lincoln and a Lexus SUV.
“When the Lord didn’t declare me throughout my seizures and tumor, I stated: ‘God, what would you like me to do?’ I started to hunt Him, very passionately,” Barres stated. “The fruit of what I’m doing with the Lord is my marriage being higher than it ever was, my kids not on the malls or on medicine, everybody in good well being. I wish to give all of them I’ve.”
After we visited, he had gone three months with out taking his post-tumor, anti-seizure medication, placing, as he stated, his well being within the arms of the Lord.
He died three years later, surrounded by his household, in Ormond Seaside.
Steven Slosberg lives in Stonington and could also be reached at maayan72@aol.com.
