John\u2019s retirement did not mean that his involvement in the world of books was over. Working as a volunteer, he helped create Julia\u2019s Caf\u00e9 & Books as part of the Habitat for Humanity of the Charlotte Region\u2019s ReStore at 1144 N. Wendover Road. John was also a collector of rare and signed books. In 2012, he donated these books to the Queens University of Charlotte Special Collections. Now known as the John Barringer Book Collection, these books are on display in the mezzanine of the Everett Library on the campus of Queens University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I first met John shortly after I moved to Charlotte in 1984. I quickly became a regular customer at Little Professor. When the name changed to Park Road Books, I kept calling the store Little Professor out of habit. I often talked with John about our shared commitment to resisting censorship. I remember John telling me that as a former Lutheran minister, he did not always personally like the values represented in all of the books that he sold in the store, but he believed that his store should include a wide range of books representing a wide range of viewpoints. He told me once about a customer who demanded that he remove a particular young adult novel from the store because she thought the book was \u201csinful,\u201d but he refused to stop selling the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
John and I also shared an interest in children\u2019s books, and he made sure that the store was welcoming to children. After my wife and I became parents, we often brought our young son to the store. Together, we enjoyed checking out the new picture books. Many of these picture books came home with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
John was very involved with the Dilworth Rotary Club. In 2020 the club invited me to give a talk about the importance of children\u2019s literature and literacy at one of their meetings, and John introduced me. In an email that he sent to me before the meeting, he wrote, \u201cI fondly recall your visits to the bookstore where you always brought your son.\u201d I fondly recall those days, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like many other book lovers, I will long remember John and his many contributions to Storied Charlotte. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
John Barringer, the founder of the store now known as Park Road Books, died on July 17, 2025, at the age of ninety. John\u2019s lasting impact on Charlotte\u2019s literary community began in 1977 when he opened the Little Professor Book Center in the Park Road Shopping Center. In August of 1999, Sally Brewster joined the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[345,16],"class_list":["post-4625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-storied-charlotte","tag-john-barringer","tag-park-road-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4625"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4628,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4625\/revisions\/4628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}