By Sarah Nagem
snagem @salisburypost.com
One school year, David Barlow transformed his science classroom at Mooresville High School into a space shuttle and control room.
Students walked through the halls dressed in astronaut-style white, saying they had to get back to the shuttle, said Margaret Shoe, another teacher at Mooresville High.
That kind of innovative education, along with other achievements, prompted Shoe to nominate Barlow for the Order of the Long Leaf Pine this year.
Barlow, 56, won the prestigious award, which is the highest civilian honor the governor can give a North Carolina resident. Winners must have contributed to their communities and served the state.
“He makes science real for the kids,” Shoe said.
Barlow, who taught in the Rowan-Salisbury School System for 12 years before going to Mooresville, retired this spring.
While he’s bidding farewell to his classroom days, Barlow isn’t finished helping his community.
“It’s a tribute, but it’s also an opportunity to think about what I want to do from here on out,” Barlow said.
He continues to serve as a captain of the Landis Fire Department, where he has been active for 16 years.
His first brush with helping those in need came when he was 11 or 12 and living with his family in Rhode Island. He and his father witnessed a car crash, and Barlow realized he was small enough to crawl through the car’s window to offer assistance to the woman and 2-year-old child inside.
“I actually climbed in,” Barlow said.
He said he held the woman, who died, and reached into the backseat to tend to the child.
“That was kind of my first introduction to the emergency services,” he said.
Barlow felt a calling to help others, he said. About 30 of the more-than-200 members of his high school class died in the Vietnam War, he said.
He got a college deferment and narrowly missed the draft.
“Losing that many of my graduating class and coming that close to being drafted, it was almost a need to do something for the community,” he said.
After he graduated from Catawba College in 1974 with a degree in geology, Barlow began his teaching career, also working as a park ranger during the summers.
In Rowan County, he taught several subjects, including history, French, math and science.
He has taught science classes at Mooresville High School for 20 years.
More than a decade ago, he formed American Odyssey, a group that has taken trips out west and to Alaska.
He started American Odyssey to offer trips to recipients of N.C. Teaching Fellows, a scholarship program for high school seniors.
“We sleep under the stars most nights on tarps,” Barlow said of the western trips.
He cancelled this year’s trip because not enough people signed up.
“This is the first Father’s Day I’ve been home since 1995,” he said.
But Barlow’s dedication to his family ó he has two sons and a daughter ó is part of the reason Shoe nominated him for the Order of Long Leaf Pine.
He’s also devoted to the Boy Scouts, which he said he has been involved with all his life. He earned his Eagle Scout status as a teenager.
Barlow’s next goal is to backpack the Blue Ridge Parkway. He plans to start the 478-mile trip on Sept. 1 and finish in mid-October.
The trek will be a good finale to a career as an educator, Barlow said.