Horace Barks, founder of Barks Publications Inc. and for more than 40 years publisher of the trade magazine Electrical Apparatus, knew from an early age that he wanted to work in journalism, his family said.
“He sold copies of the Saturday Evening Post when he was a little kid,” said his wife, Elsie Dickson Barks, who was also his partner in business. “That reinforced his interest in having something to do with the magazine business.”
Mrs. Barks said she had seen pictures of her husband from that time, with red hair and shouldering a Saturday Evening Post bag full of copies of the magazine.
“He sort of looked like a Rockwell painting,” she said. “He sold a lot of copies.”
Mr. Barks, 90, died of natural causes Tuesday, May 1, in Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago, according to his wife. He had lived on the Near North Side of Chicago since the late 1960s.
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