Alex Martinez was 15 when she first met Chris Barry as a student at Glen Cove High School. Nearly three decades later, her son is a junior at the school — and now takes Barry’s television production class.
For Martinez, the coincidence illustrates the reach Barry has had across generations of students.
“I feel so grateful to have witnessed the entirety of Mr. Barry’s career,” Martinez said.
Barry, 58, was honored Oct. 5 by Friends of Arts & Music Enrichment GC during the organization’s annual fall fundraiser at the Sea Cliff Yacht Club, recognizing a career that has spanned professional television and nearly 30 years educating students through Glen Cove TV.
Maria Laino DeLuca, FAME GC’s vice president of marketing and events, said Barry has “helped shape generations of students through media, broadcasting and television production.” He took over the program established by longtime educator Thom Ruckert, carrying forward a legacy that helped make GCTV an early innovator in school-based television production.
Barry’s path to the classroom was not one he initially expected.
A former Queens resident who now lives in Glen Cove, Barry attended what was then C.W. Post College intending to study radio. After taking television courses, however, he found himself more interested in production and switched his major.
While at Post, Barry met adjunct professor Dan Cox, who also worked at Glen Cove High School. Cox encouraged his college students to use GCTV’s equipment for their senior projects because the high school’s facilities were better than what they had available at college.
The experience stuck with Barry.
After graduating, he interned with Jim Henson and the Muppets while Henson was still alive and was later hired. Barry went on to spend about seven years working in professional television, including freelance jobs with AMC, MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, ABC and CBS.
But the long hours and uncertainty of freelance television eventually made him reconsider his career.
“I just started to feel like I wanted something with a little bit more purpose,” Barry said. “That’s what I found here.”
Barry began taking graduate education courses at Queens College and contacted Cox to ask how he could make the transition into teaching. The timing proved fortuitous: Cox told him he was leaving his position and would recommend Barry for the job.
Barry said he arrived without a traditional background in education and leaned heavily on Ruckert’s example.
“I didn’t know how to do this at all when I got here,” Barry said. “I found out how to do this the right way from Tom Ruckert.”
Ruckert believed GCTV should be a home for the students who entered the studio each day, Barry said, a philosophy he adopted throughout his own career.
That impact was reflected during the fundraiser when students presented a video thanking Barry. Former students described the studio as a place where they could be themselves and spoke about the influence Barry had on their lives.
Martinez was among them. Inspired by Barry, she studied mass media and communications in college and later worked alongside him for about five years.
“Mr. Barry has a photo of me on the wall with my big belly,” Martinez said, recalling her pregnancy. “Now my son is a junior and is taking Mr. Barry’s class.”
The FAME honor follows another recognition for Barry. Earlier this year, he received the Broadcast Alliance for Senior High Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing his work in student broadcasting and media education.
Now in his 30th year at the school, Barry is eligible for retirement and said he is strongly considering it.
His immediate plans, he said, would be simple: stay in Glen Cove and enjoy the home and community that he has had little time to experience outside of work.
“I want to live in my home in Glen Cove and see what that’s like when I’m not working,” Barry said.
Looking back, Barry said teaching provided something he had begun searching for during his television career.
“You’re an important part of someone’s life,” he said. “I found a lot more purpose being here in my life than what I thought I was doing in the TV biz.”
