Barbara Lenton (formerly Byro)
1950 - 2022
Barbara was born in the New York's Bronx in 1950. As a teenager she worked as a volunteer at the zoo, and attended college in New York. Before switching to the digital world, Barbara was employed in research, working with investigational teams for the American Museum of Natural History, New York Medical College, and the New York Zoological Society. When she was pregnant with her second child she was advised to change careers because research on AIDS was just starting and at that time no one knew just how dangerous it would be.
She eventually settled on a job in General Electric's network games section - known as GEnie. Eventually she ended up being the customer service person looking after games. One of the games she managed was a British game called Federation (or sometimes Federation II). Eventually GE decided that they didn't want to run a consumer network. (In retrospect, that was probably a wise move.)
Federation moved to AOL, which was then just starting to take off, and Barbara became the de facto game manager. Eventually AOL was effectively killed off by the rise of the web. Barbara worked for a while in an ad agency, but left to take a job in a major networking company in New York.
On 9/11 she was checking the backup generator on the roof of her work building when she saw the plane fly into the second tower. A lot of Wall Street business and banks had their back-up centres in the Twin Towers, and Barbara was instrumental in organising new back-up centres within days - two days in one case. This cemented her reputation as a business continuity/disaster recovery person.
Eventually, Barbara moved to England, and after she had been there a while married Alan Lenton. Given that Barbara was a US citizen, getting official permission to get married was not without problems. The would-be husband and wife had to go down to the main immigrations building in Croydon and each was grilled separately. One of the questions asked was "What colour was the duvet on your bed when you got up this morning?" Barb answered, "Black". This answer caused a narrowing of eyes by the questioner, who pressed a bell push on the table, which turned out to summon her boss. The two of them asked if she was sure. Barbara was puzzled. Suddenly, light dawned! "You didn't ask Alan that question, did you?", she asked. "Yes", they said. Barb smiled sweetly. "You do know that he is colour blind?", she asked. Permission to marry was granted forthwith!
That wasn't the only problem. Barbara had to produce her divorce certificate from her first marriage. Since the divorce took place in Pennsylvania the certificate was a magnificent document that had to be sent down to the registrar's head office for validation. Barbara had a note back from the head office saying they didn't have a reference Pennsylvanian divorce certificate on file. Would she mind if they took a copy of hers to be their reference copy! Of course, she said yes. And finally the marriage took place.
Barbara was now able to work and for several years she worked for a US oil engineering company in south-east London. There is a story about that work here. After that, gradually worsening medical problems meant that she was unable to continue working.
As the medical problems got worse, Barbara spent increasing long periods in hospital where she died early on the morning of Monday 9 May 2022. In accordance with her wishes she was cremated on 26 May at London's Enfield Crematorium and her ashes scattered in the garden of rest.
RIP Barbara Lenton 1950-2022
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