Barbara J. Pruett

PRUETT BARBARA J. PRUETT (Age 68) Of Washington died peacefully on Tuesday, March 16, 2010. Barbara was a librarian, scholar, writer, artist, and an avid lover of country music. She was born Barbara Gosnell in Madison, Indiana, May 8, 1942. She graduated in 1965 from Indiana University in Bloomington. She married and divorced in the five years after graduation. She received her Master''s in Library Science from California State University at San Jose in 1971. In the early 1970s she worked as a full-time volunteer with the United Farm Workers Union led by Cesar Chavez. She lived at the Union''s national headquarters, known as La Paz, in the Kern County foothills of the Tehachapi Mountains at the southern end of California''s San Joaquin Valley. She organized the Union''s library and extensive archives. Moving to Washington in 1975, she worked first as a librarian at Catholic University. A few years later she became the chief librarian at the U. S. International Trade Commission where she worked for the rest of her career. She wrote two books: Marty Robbins: Fast Cars and Country Music (Scarecrow Press 1990; reissued in 2007); and Popular Entertainment Research: How to Do It and How to Use It (Scarecrow Press 1992). In the first, she compiled detailed lists of Robbins'' accomplishments in music and film and bibliographies of reviews and news items so the sources would be at hand for studies by others. Washington writer Diane Diekman is doing a Robbins biography and conferred several times with Barbara on sources. The Country Music Hall of Fame used her collection of Robbins materials in their exhibit on Marty. She was also a huge fan of the country and gospel quartet, the Oak Ridge Boys. When she became ill in the later days of her life, the "Oaks" sent her autographed pictures and get-well cards. She fought for the music she loved. When District Cablevision dropped The Nashville Network in the early 1990s, she organized the local community of musicians, country dancers and fans and advocated for years for its return, gaining endorsements from touring stars and co-authoring a Post op-ed in fall 1994 on the unrecognized popularity of country music in urban areas. The Library of Congress published her scholarship in its annual volumes on the Performing Arts. She wrote on Patrick McGoohan, the actor in the television series "The Prisoner" who was a personal friend for many years, also on the Marx Brothers and on the thousands of scripts of plays in the Library collection. At her death she had unfinished scholarly writing about the British army officer and author T. E. Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia. Barbara was an amateur photographer. She took many beautiful pictures and used them to make note cards she sold in Washington stores and online through her business Clouds Hill Publishing, formed with her friend, Voice of America country music broadcaster Judy Massa. Friends especially enjoyed receiving her handmade Christmas cards and framed the beautiful images they included. She is survived by a sister, Patti Gosnell, of Jeffersonville, In. A memorial service will be Saturday, May 22, at 2 p.m. at Cleveland Park Congregational Church, 3400 Lowell St. NW, Washington, DC 20016. In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent in support of the program of research and scholarship at the Country Music Foundation, 222 Fifth Ave. South, Nashville, TN 37203.