Clarence (“Trip”) Barnes III, a Tisbury businessman and a larger-than-life Vineyard figure who dedicated himself to the Island, died at his West Tisbury home on Tuesday afternoon while in the care of Hospice & Palliative Care of Martha’s Vineyard. He was 83.
Elizabeth Barnes said her father died from complications from a combination of serious health conditions, including congestive heart failure. She said the “tough as nails” Barnes survived for much longer than anticipated, and he entered into hospice care over a week ago.
Barnes is remembered for his generosity, from simply helping Islanders to auctioneering with a booming voice to fundraise for local causes, including the hospice.
“It’s full circle in terms of that,” Elizabeth said.
Born in New York in 1942, Barnes spent many holidays in the Chappaquiddick house his father bought. His familial connection goes back to Barnes’s great-great-grandfather, Alfred Smith Barnes of Brooklyn, who bought a family home in Oak Bluffs. The rural Island on the Atlantic had a different charm than the Manhattan neighborhood — Park Street and 76th Street — he grew up in, and at the age of 17, Barnes struck out on his own to chart his Vineyard path.
Barnes started off as a farmhand at Sweetened Water Farm in Edgartown, which is also where he learned to operate a truck, later getting a job with Carroll’s Trucking in Vineyard Haven. In an interview with Martha’s Vineyard Magazine, Barnes credited a 1948 Ford truck he bought in 1961 for $250 as the start of his interest in “buying and selling used cars, and was also the start of the Clarence A. Barnes, III Moving & Storage company.”
The moving company is perhaps Barnes’ most well known venture, and he would transport goods for a myriad of companies. He would later sell the moving and storage company to Carroll’s.
Barnes also served over a decade as a Tisbury representative of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission. Ben Robinson, a commissioner who represented the same town, described Barnes as “larger-than-life” with a “quick read on things.” Even when there were disagreements, Robinson said Barnes was “ready to roll his sleeves up and figure things out.”
“We always got along because we were die-hard Tisbury,” Robinson said. “Even when we disagreed, we knew we were looking out for Tisbury.”
But politics was just a small part of Barnes, Robinson said. Barnes shined in his drive to help Islanders. Raising money for conservation organizations, the elementary schools, and helping to build the Agricultural Society’s barn that’s become a West Tisbury fixture.
An example of this was Barnes’ role in establishing the Vineyard House, a substance use recovery house in Tisbury. A part of that seemed connected to Barnes’ own past with excessive drinking. In an 2022 interview with The Times’ “Voices of Recovery” series, he said “my relationship with [Alcoholics Anonymous] started in 1962. I finally stopped for good in 1988. I was in and out, in and out, in and out.”
Brian Mackey, former executive director of the Vineyard House, said Barnes was one of the founders of the program in 1997, remembering him as “no-nonsense guy” who was focused on bringing improvements for the recovery community, particularly so individuals would not need to leave the Island for help.
“He gave a lot of himself,” Brian Mackey, former executive director of the Vineyard House, said, calling Barnes a positive force who stayed active with the program and often “gave his two cents.”
Mackey, a Chilmark resident, said that he recalled while driving past Barnes’ house recently that the trucker was seen less compared to years prior and thought to himself, “I wonder how Trip is?”
“He will be missed,” Mackey said. “He was a friend.”
Mackey isn’t the only one who saw Barnes as a friend. Barnes was recognized in 2018 with the Creative Living Award by the former Permanent Endowment of Martha’s Vineyard, an honor that highlighted individuals who enriched quality of life on the Vineyard.
“My father really believed in the spirit and effort of being in community,” Elizabeth said. “The reason he really loved the Island was because he loved the people on the Island.”
When he accepted the award in 2018, Barnes shared his thoughts on living a full life on the Island.
“You know, I never wanted to live anywhere else. I’ve been to every state in the Union, except Hawaii, probably five times, maybe more,” Barnes said at the time. “This is where I live, and I love the people here, and I love the Island, and you know, what else is there? Things are changing, but it’s still inherently a fabulous place. And I just try to keep things a little bit the way they were. Sometimes I guess I’m a little loosey-goosey about the way I go about things, but it kind of works, you know. If it works, don’t break it.”
Barnes, Elizabeth Told The Times, wished he could have done more for the Island in his “heart of hearts.”
“At the end of his life, he was frustrated he didn’t have more time,” she said.
A service and a celebration of life is planned for October.
Trip is survived by son Clarence Barnes IV and his wife Jamie Barnes, son Michael Barnes and wife Alecia Barnes, Elizabeth and her partner, his grandchildren Henry, Ian, and Harrison Barnes, his former wife Judith Cronig, and his fiancee Joan Silva-Pretty and her family.
