Barber
MONTGOMERY – Funeral services for former Orange County Republican chairman Clifford Barber will be held at 10 a.m. on Friday at the First Reformed Church in Walden. He died at age 97 on Sunday, January 11.
Barber was GOP chairman for nine years, from 1976 to 1981 and again from 1991-1995.
A lawyer by profession, he also served on the Walden Village Board from 1941-1950 and was an elected Montgomery town justice for four terms beginning in 1955.
State Senator William Larkin (R, Cornwall-on-Hudson) worked closely with Barber.
“He put the people he represented in front of his personal life and I think he did an outstanding job as out county chairman,” Larkin said. “He did the old time politics.”
Barber received a presidential appointment from then President Ronald Reagan to the US Assay Office in New York City and was the last presidential appointment as superintendent to the US Assay Office in New York.
He was in charge of moving all of the gold bullion from that office to West Point, creating the West Point Mint. He struck the first Olympic Gold Coin in 1984.
