Barb Harrington

After 36 years of living and working in the Silicon Valley, Barb Harrington was more than ready to get back to her mid-western roots.
     “I have really good memories of coming up to Wisconsin (during the summers),” she said. “I still remember the A&W down in Edgerton - that is still there! I just loved, loved, loved the 60s here. It was a blast.”
     It was her brother who convinced her to visit San Francisco for a year after she graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
     “And I ended up staying for 36 and a half years,” she said. “I saw all of Silicon Valley growing. I would see Steve Jobs in restaurants. It was no big deal.”
     At the age of 58, Harrington was finishing her 13th year at a biotech company but also wanting more in her life.
     “I needed to come back to the Midwest,” she said. “The move in high school kind of cut off my Midwest soul. I wanted before I died to come back.”
     So, in 2016 Harrington visited with friends and family in Wisconsin for six months.
     Harrington said she loved being here, but she had to go back to San Francisco to care for a friend and to finish her training the Third Order of the Secular Franciscans.
     “There was unfinished business, so I went back … and completed everything.”
     After her friend passed away and she was professed by the Franciscans, Harrington knew that she would have to get back into the biotech game to make enough money to stay in San Francisco.
     Again, she talked to her brother, who agreed that it might be time for her to move to a more affordable part of the country.
     “I just didn’t think San Francisco was the place to grow old,” Harrington said. “It is crowded, extremely expensive and there is a homeless epidemic. It was time.”
     She moved to Wisconsin in September of last year. “It is just an easy fit,” she said. “It fulfills that dream of wanting to be back in the Midwest … to be close to my family.”
     Harrington said she has several aunts and uncles in southern Wisconsin, and “I want to be there for them at the end of their years.”
     After she arrived in Wisconsin, Harrington worked as a manager of a local retail cooking store. She slowly learned her way around and ended up at St. Bernard for Mass.
     “I really liked Fr. Brian’s homilies, and I just happened to see this position available. It’s all about timing!”
     Harrington said her work here as the administrative assistant doesn’t feel like a job.
     “I feel really good at night and on the weekends instead of feeling beat up,” she said. “I am aligned. I don’t have to be hiding … being Catholic at night and on the weekends. It feels really good.
     “I’m here for the flock. I’m really about having a divine presence for everybody and serving.”
     In San Francisco, Harrington tried to leave the world of biotech for the church on several occasions.
     “The call of the Catholic faith got very, very strong,” she said. “I was also wanting to leave the secular environment, which became so black and white for me. It was really tough for me to work out there. It was tough to be a conservative Catholic. You had to hide it.
     “I had always been a very strong Catholic. Moving to Colorado … the Catholic faith is not as strong there. I was used to the really deep Wisconsin-Minnesota Catholic, so this is a return for me.”
     Harrington said she was watching the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) and learned about the Third Order of Carmelites.
     “You don’t have to be a priest or a nun. It is the civilian level,” she said. “You are in the world. You can be around the Catholic faith and people who are really devout and practicing and growing in it.”
     She spent some time with the Carmelites, but realized that they weren’t exactly what she was looking for. Then she found the Secular Franciscans.
     Their formation is based on the Franciscan rule: “To follow the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and to walk in His footsteps.”
     “You get that internal lantern … it lights up within you,” she said. “It softens you and changes you.”
     Harrington said she was hardened by the corporate world, but the Secular Franciscans showed her a new way of being.
     “The Franciscan way, it is defined as a common dialogue. Everybody has a value in their conversation with you. I found myself … wanting to fight (in the corporate world). All of a sudden, I was at peace and a peacemaker.
     “So all those Franciscan values … because you are on that path … they started to change my soul and my spirit. I’m still in process, (but) you start to see the world a little bit differently. It is good.”
     Harrington said she will be able to continue her studies with the Franciscans in Milwaukee.
     “Over the course of my life, I’ve rejected getting married and having kids. I think I was destined to be a nun, but I was dealing with such a secular world. And my family as well. Nobody was there to help guide or train me.
     “I really, really wanted the Catholic faith in Colorado. I was just at a loss, and I didn’t know where to go. There was no one to really talk to. My parents weren’t providing that. They did great when I was growing up as a kid … but I felt abandoned.
     “I was always looking for it and drawn to it. It was … quite a tumultuous period of not having that. I would ask God … this isn’t my path. This doesn’t feel right.”
     After three years of study, Harrington was professed as a Secular Franciscan in 2017.
     “What is nice about that is you are always prayed for … forever and ever,” she said. “If I get stuck in purgatory, which I probably will be, they pray for you and they help your soul. You are always part of that … no matter what.”
     In her role here at St. Bernard, Harrington said she feels like a witness to the people in her life who know that she is working in a parish.
     “Whether that is family and friends or whoever … that will have a recuperative effect. When you put that little stone in the pond and then it goes out. It reinforces that: Yes, out of everything in my life I could choose, I chose this.
     “So that tells you this is meaningful and important so then everyone will think, ‘Maybe I ought to think about this.’ I want to let God work through me to help them.”
     Finally, Harrington said she has many fond memories of being in Wisconsin with her family, but she wants to make more memories here with her family and new friends.
    “I’m just trying to bring it into the present,” she said. “I like it here. So what is happening is I am noticing: I am reconnecting. It is coming back!”