Road paved with 40 years of work

Directions to Barlow Boulevard: Head out the door from the maintenance office at the Longboat Key Club and Resort’s Islandside golf course, go around another maintenance building and you’ll see the sign for the service road that leads to the golf course. It takes just a minute or two by foot — even less time by golf cart.

But for Richard “Sam” Barlow, the journey to Barlow Boulevard has been 40 years in the making.

Barlow reported for his first day of work May 11, 1970. He was 19 and had been hired by Arvida Corp. to work as one of four employees in its landscaping department. Starting pay: just under $2 an hour. Back then, the Islandside golf course was the Longboat Key Golf Club, and Harbourside wasn’t even a sketch on a developer’s pad. The Key was dotted with just a few condominiums.

Barlow stuck with his job throughout the development of the island and the Key Club and now works as an irrigation technician at the Islandside golf course. With four decades of service, Barlow is now the Key Club’s longest-serving employee. He arrives at the Key Club at 5 a.m. to inspect the systems. His secret to success on the job?

“Just do the best you can in whatever you’re doing,” Barlow said. “I help wherever I can and try not to get in the way.”

But, according to his supervisor, John Reilly, director of agronomy at the Key Club, the truth is more complicated.

“Sam is a modern-day MacGyver,” he said.

Many of the parts for the irrigation-system pumps are no longer available, so Barlow makes the replacements himself. He works on a complicated four-pipe system instead of one central system.

“He takes care of a very old, antiquated system, and he does it with grace and a smile,” Reilly said.

Looking back on the past 40 years, Barlow says he has some interesting memories of the Key Club: He got to ride in a hot-air balloon during an event promotion. He held his breath and went under water to fix a cracked pipe located 2 feet beneath the surface of a pond. He got to meet Aerosmith. And, on Sept. 11, 2001, then President George W. Bush jogged right past Barlow on the beach and said hello.

And there was also that day earlier this month. Because Key Club employees get a special nametag on their 25-year anniversary with the company, Reilly told Barlow that he needed a special nametag in honor of his 40 years of service. So, at a quarterly staff meeting, Reilly presented him with a package. Inside was a special nametag, indeed. It read: “Barlow Boulevard.”

In honor of Barlow, the street sign was installed a few days later.

“It’s totally cool,” Barlow said. “It’s nice to see in the morning.”

Contact Robin Hartill at [email protected]