Rev. F. Lyman "Barney" Farnham

Farnham August 29, 2007 The Rev. F. Lyman "Barney" Farnham, a Syracuse native who spent much of his life as an Episcopal priest in Baltimore but never stopped summering in New York's Adirondack Mountains, died of cancer at his Baltimore home on Wednesday, August 29. He was 74. In the years following his 1998 retirement from a lengthy rectorship in Baltimore, Barney served as the priest-in-charge at the Church of the Transfiguration, a summer chapel in Blue Mountain Lake. He and his wife built a camp at nearby Lake Abanakee in 1967 and summered there as a family, with their four children, every year - a tradition they continued with his service at the Blue Mountain Lake church. The Farnhams were at Lake Abanakee in July when they began to suspect that the prostate cancer that Barney survived 16 years ago had returned. "He lived life fully, and his life was grace-filled," says his wife of 47 years, the former Suzanne Gipson, also of upstate New York. Barney grew up in Westvale and lived with his parents - the late Hon. John H. Farnham, a state supreme court justice, and Katherine Doreen Lyman Farnham - on Cherry Road until graduating from Solvay High School in 1951, where he was president of the student council, and going away to Trinity College in Hartford, CT. From there he went to the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, and was ordained a priest in 1962. He spent his early years serving churches in the Booneville Mission Fields in the foothills of the Adirondacks, and in Horseheads, NY. In 1968 he moved to Baltimore to serve as rector of Memorial Episcopal Church in the downtown neighborhood of Bolton Hill. Barney made his mark on Memorial - and Baltimore. He not only preached about bridging Baltimore's racial divide, but worked hard to bring the city's blacks and whites together; he built a strong urban ministry and tirelessly championed the city; and he founded one of the city's earliest AIDS ministries. He was also a spirited and committed fan of the Baltimore Orioles (whose stadium sits a block from his home) and Ravens. In addition to his wife, Suzanne, Barney is survived by his four children, Wendy Schon of Madison, CT, Whitney Farnham of Unadilla, NY, Austin Farnham of Severna Park, MD, and Brent Farnham of Atlanta, GA; his sister, Jo-An Howe of Coronado, CA; and his 10 grandchildren.