Dick & Margie Barkey Family Cars

After graduation from CSU in June, 1963, Margie and Dick with Brett and Brad moved to Pueblo, Colorado.   Dick did personnel management work on the Frying Pan-Arkansas water reclamation project.  On a very hot summer day in 1964 they decided to get a car with air conditioning.  So the next family car was a 1959 Chevrolet station wagon like this (ours was all white):

This was probably the biggest Chevrolet model ever built.  It was roomy… ok, it was a bit of a boat…but the boys liked the big “play room” in the back.   The first evening we had this car we went to a drive-in theater.  It was great!

In June,1965 Dick was assigned to work on a special project in Denver.  We decided to rent our house in Pueblo and move to Lakewood.  The project in Denver turned into a permanent job and in 1967 Dick went to work for the U.S. Bureau of Mines in Lakewood.   That summer we bought our first new car, a 1967 Ford Galaxy 500 just like the one pictured here (this exact color):

We had this car when the family moved to Washington, D.C. (actually northern Virginia) in the summer of 1969.

Our beautiful ’67 Ford met it’s end in in a serious, life threatening accident in December 1970 in central Illinois.  Fortunately, everyone survived the accident with Margie suffering the longest term injuries to her neck and back.   We were headed back to Colorado for the Christmas holidays and had to fly to Denver from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.  On the flight home the flight crew invited Brett and Brad into the cockpit.

In Colorado we decided to replace the ’67 wagon with a new 1971 Ford Galaxy wagon like this one:

This was the car that all the boys, Brett, Brad, Bruce and Brian learned to drive.

In 1972 we moved back to Lakewood, Colorado from Fairfax, Virginia. We purchased a 1962 Ford Thunderbird Landau to provide some extra family transportation. In 1983 we did restoration on the Thunderbird and it looked like this:

The 1962 Thunderbird was the car we owned the longest.  It was purchased in 1972 for $550 and was sold in 2020.   Brad took this photo near Lookout Mountain after it had been treated to an engine rebuild, new vinel top and paint job that matched it’s original paint.

In 1979 Margie purchased a new 1979 Ford Fairmont station wagon just like this one.  

This Ford got used hard but kept on going.   Brett took it to Washington DC to attend Georgetown University Law School.  Just as he got ready to return to Colorado after graduation the Fairmont got detained with a “Denver Boot” for parking tickets that had built up in DC.  It seemed like the cost of the tickets were close to the value of the car but they got paid so Brett would have a way to get home.

Then Bruce used the car while he worked as a ski instructor in Steamboat Springs one winter. In 1990 Dick took to Fairmont to Minnesota for a year when he worked for United Health Care.  This car served our whole family well until we traded it for a Ford pickup in 1991.

Here’s another car that several Barkey and Buchanan family members used for several years. A 1963 Buick Skylark like this one was purchased by Jane Buchanan from her hospital supervisor, “Brownie” around 1970. Brownie had purchased the car new and it was in beautiful condition. It had an aluminum V8 engine and was great to drive. It got heavy use by Jane and Jim and James Neilson and Lynn around Fort Collins and later at Battle Rock Farm in Cortez. It did have a design flaw… It could be started without the key. Auto thieves knew about that flaw and the Skylark was stolen 3 times. It was found in each time. When Jim and Lynn took the Skylark to Washington DC one of these thefts happened, the car was found and later they were flown back to Washington to testify a trial. Around 1984 the Skylark was abandoned at Battle Rock farm. Dick bought the Skylark from Jane for $200 and sent Brad and Bruce to Cortez to trailer it back to Lakewood. With a few new parts and a paint job it looked just like this one. Bruce took the Buick to Fort Collins when he attended CSU.

The End

More about Barkey Family Cars:

Family Cars: Nebraska to Colorado

Family Cars in California, Indiana and Illinois

Family Cars in La Junta, Englewood and Fort Collins

Dick and Margie Barkey Family Cars