Many residents and owners of small Broad Ripple businesses will remember Lillian Barcio primarily as the Publisher and Editor of The Village Sampler, founded by her in June 1987.

In her first issue she proudly announced that The Village Sampler would be a monthly publication of news, features, pictures and advertisements of interest to the members of the Broad Ripple Village community. As Broad Ripple approached its sesquicentennial celebration, she hoped that The Sampler would help cement the strong community feeling already present in the Village-a village with which she was definitely in love.

The road from the south side of Indianapolis-where Lillian spent her childhood living frequently with her grandmother in a small frame house near Garfield Park-to Broad Ripple had not been an easy one. Like many children whose parents were caught up in the challenges of WWII either by serving in the army, as her father had, or by working in factories, as her mother had, Lillian was often told to pack some clothes in a grocery bag and take a bus to go stay with her grandmother or her aunt. By the time she entered Shortridge H.S., she had attended several different grade schools, depending on which relative she happened to be staying with at the time.

But Lillian was a trooper, a very intelligent one. Her rough and tumble youth had given her self-confidence, daring, and common sense, enabling her to excel at Shortridge.

Lillian always knew immediately whenever anyone tried to feed her a line.

After several semesters at I.U., Lillian left college to become a wife and mother, dedicating the next 14 years to raising three daughters while living in Air force Base housing and then working as a secretary for a steel company in Lafayette to help her husband get an advanced degree from Purdue.

When this marriage ended, Lillian moved back to Indianapolis with her daughters and accepted a position as secretary to the Headmaster of Park School, then located on Cold Spring Road. She worked closely with the Headmaster and Board of Directors as the school made plans to merge with Tudor Hall and move its campus to its current location near Broad Ripple. She also coordinated news releases for the Latin Master of Park School, Bernard Barcio, who, at the same time, was hurling Park School into the national limelight with his innovative Roman Catapult project.

In her new role as Mrs. Barcio, Lillian moved her three girls to 6544 N. Ferguson in Old Broad Ripple where her husband, Bernard Barcio, had bought the old river house on contract. He was soon involved in building two new additions to accommodate their growing family that would number seven.

During the day, Lillian preferred to be a stay-at-home Mom with her two new infants, but in the evenings Bernie would drive her to the Northside Topics newspaper offices, then located on North College Ave., where she worked as a copy writer and type setter.

After several years at the Topics, Lillian went to work in the advertising department of Danners Department Store. By now, her and Bernie's two youngest children were attending school and she could start working days. When Danners changed its management policies, Lillian left and was hired as University Relations Secretary in the publications department of Butler-a job she would hold for the next seven years.

Concerning Lillian, the Dean of Students at Butler wrote: "She has proficient design and publication skills and is a talented and creative person, a delightful person with whom to work. As tension builds up because of publication deadlines, she maintains a pleasant demeanor and sense of humor."

When Lillian learned that, as a full time Butler employee, she qualified for tuition remission, she decided that she would complete her college degree. She signed up for 24 tuition-free hours that would enable her to receive her undergraduate degree by the end of the term. Her major was journalism.

Her writing talents were immediately recognized, and three assignments she completed for her Feature Writing class at Butler were published in the Indianapolis Magazine: "Public Relations," an article about three budding Indianapolis restaurateurs (Aug. '84, pp. 21-23); "Living Aloft," an article about the Harness Factory Loft (Sept. '84, p. 13); and "The Peanut King," a story about the Richard Green Nut Co. (Dec. '84, p. 20);

At the same time, Lillian was also working as a self-employed typesetter and typist out of a basement office in her and Bernie's new home on Indianola Avenue in Broad Ripple. As soon as she earned her diploma on May 17, 1987, she was ready to begin following her long time dream of publishing a small, neighborhood newspaper.

Her first day in her new profession, she dressed in her best business suit, put on a comfortable pair of walking shoes, took her small briefcase and walked into Broad Ripple to introduce herself to all of its merchants and sell them on her idea. She succeeded.

She helped merchants design their ads and set them herself. To do this she had to install now primitive-seeming publishing software on her small capacity (by today's standards) computer and teach herself how to use the program, often working well into the night and drawing on all her determination and grit to overcome frustration after frustration. She came up with all her own story ideas, wrote and edited them, took and developed her own photos, laid in original art and clip art, and later cut ruby so she could add color highlights to her publication. Before long, she was able to offer other Broad Ripple authors and cartoonists opportunities to have their work published in The Sampler.

Lillian was a one-woman dynamo riding high on the exhilaration that comes from fulfilling one's long-held aspirations.

One aspect of her publishing that she found most rewarding was researching the history of Broad Ripple's early settlements and its settlers. She met many descendants of original families who willingly shared personal recollections, family stories and photos. Her stories ranged from the "Old Settler Meeting Held at Kerr's Woods (Broad Ripple Park) on Thursday, August 9, 1883," (complete with photo!) to "Broad Ripple vs. Wellington-our 'Tale of Two Cities.' "

She did stories about the old Broad Ripple Town Hall, the first Broad Ripple High School building with photos of the horse-drawn buggies used by students, The great Broad Ripple flood and the role played by the J. F. Mustard Hall in that disaster, the historical locations of the Broad Ripple Post Office, the White River Ice House located near Broad Ripple Ave., the Broad Ripple Trolley, the White City (amusement) Park, the White River paddle boat disasters, the discovery of natural gas in Broad Ripple, the Great Train Wreck on the Monon, The Central Canal, Broad Ripple's mysteriously disappearing graveyards, the early Vogue Theater, Murphy's, Haag Drugstore, Bud Wolf Chevrolet on Broad Ripple Ave., and the Great White River Raft Race.

She featured such Broad Ripple historical residents as Blacksmith James Greenwood, Sarah Messersmith who in 1914 lived in a small house located at 724 Broad Ripple Ave, Daltan and Annie Clark who carried round stones from the White River to build their home at 6017 Indianola Ave., Katherine and Jack Higgens who, in 1942, bought a hundred-year old house located at 6357 Guilford, Lena Day who in the 1930's raised eight children in a little house located at 6310 Ferguson while working at Borky's Drive Inn that once stood on ground now owned by McDonald's, The Bacon family, the Rev. John Strange and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary Martha Washington who was born on the farm house that once stood on the new Park-Tudor School campus, Polly Alice Carter who lived in the log house later converted into Dodd's Restaurant and who is commemorated by a small nearby park dedicated to her honor, and the legendary Michael Angelo Lobraico.

In the course of all her activity with The Sampler, Lillian downplayed the diagnoses and successful treatments she received for several different cancers. Her biggest challenge, however, came when she was blindsided by adult onset diabetes. This resulted in macular degeneration and finally forced her to give up her editorship.

Her son Phillip Barcio assumed the editorship of The Sampler in September 1997. He changed its format to a slick-cover magazine with four-color ads. The final issue of The Village Sampler magazine was published in December 1998.

As Lillian prepared to put the August 1997 issue of the Village Sampler to bed, the 125th and final issue prepared under her editorship, she thought about her past ten years at the helm and the changes that had taken place. The Sampler's format had changed, growing from a 4-page to a 12-page publication. Of the thirty businesses that had advertised in her first issue, only ten were still in operation. She thought about how Broad Ripple Village had changed. The Sampler's first issue had contained a "Letter to the Editor" mentioning the petition for a Rail-Trail on the abandoned Monon Railroad right-of-way. The Monon Trail was now a reality. Lillian closed her final editorial with the last verses of the poem "At Broad Ripple" by James Whitcomb Riley. These were the same verses with which she had closed her first editorial ten years earlier.

Commissioned to write a brief, concise history of Broad Ripple, Lillian had penned the following:

"When construction began on the proposed 459-mile Central Canal in 1837, there were two settlements in the area-Broad Ripple, north of the Canal, and Wellington, to the south. The two became one when the U.S. Post Office was established in Wellington and named Broad Ripple.

"The Indiana State Treasury went bankrupt after only 8.79 miles were completed between the feeder dam on White River and the center of Indianapolis. Although incomplete, the Canal provided a means of transportation for goods and people plus hydraulic power for two mills built just below the feeder dam.

"As railroads gained in popularity, commercial traffic on the Canal came to a halt, but tracks for the Indianapolis, Delphi and Chicago Railroad (later the Monon Line) were laid through Broad Ripple. Later, the Union Traction Company's interurban line-the largest interurban system in the world-and the Indianapolis and Broad Ripple Transit Company's electrified streetcars also came through Broad Ripple. In fact, the last electrified streetcar to run in Indiana rode to the Broad Ripple Park turn-around before retiring to the car barns.

"In the early 1900's, Broad Ripple was considered a resort area. White City Park (now Broad Ripple Park) with its 500-foot boardwalk, rides, dance hall and exits to White River, was compared to Coney Island. Its Olympic-size swimming pool was the scene of the 1924 Olympic tryouts at which Johnny Weissmuller (a.k.a. Tarzan) won the 100-meter freestyle event and later a gold medal at the Olympics. White City Park was destroyed by fire, rebuilt, destroyed by fire again, and later sold to the City of Indianapolis.

"Broad Ripple Village boasts a diverse mix of homes, small shops, international restaurants, a fire station, park, art center, two high schools, one grade school, one junior high, and a rail-trail where the Monon once ran.

"Having survived floods, fires, explosions and the establishment of a competing shopping center, Broad Ripple Village, like the mythical Phoenix, continues to thrive on Indianapolis' north side."

Lillian Rose Barcio, a true friend of Broad Ripple, was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2002. After a heroic and inspirational battle, she passed away on Leap Day, February 29, 2004.

The Indianapolis Special Collections Room in the newly renovated Indianapolis Marion County Central Public Library has accepted copies of all the issues of The Village Sampler newspaper published under her editorship as well as of The Village Sampler magazine, which were published by her son.