Park Ranger Tracey Walker
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By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO—Tracey Walker, the chief ranger at Mission Trails Regional Park, has a special reason for mourning the passing of actor Gene Barry, who died Wednesday at age 90.
One of Barry’s most famous television roles was as the dapper, gold-cane carrying, western lawman and gambler Bartholomew “Bat” Masterson, whom Walker believes was his great-grandfather.
Walker said it was Barry’s television performances as Masterson between 1958 and 1961 that led to disclosure by his mother of a family secret: Walker’s great-grandmother Elizabath Baker had become pregnant by Masterson while she worked as a maid at the Horton Hotel in the area known to San Diegans today as the Gaslamp Quarter.
Although Masterson is not recorded as having any children, “it’s not the kind of thing my mother would make up,” Walker said in an interview at Mission Trails Regional Park a wilderness area that remains today quite similar to the way it looked when traversed by Kumeyaay Indians who migrated between villages in the mountains to the east and the coastline to the west.
After hearing that Masterson was a direct ancestor, Walker began learning as much as he could about the legendary lawman, leading to a lifelong hobby of portraying Masterson in historical presentations, particularly in Tombstone, Arizona, where Masterson was a contemporary and friend of Wyatt Earp.
Walker also gives free lectures to schools and to civic groups about Masterson’s life as a lawman, gambler, author and newspaper columnist. He explains that Masterson came to San Diego to visit Earp, who ran Gaslamp Quarter gambling houses and who could be frequently found in the late 1800s at the Oyster Bar.
Walker said that while he was a youngster, he wrote to Gene Barry about the research he was doing about Masterson, and the actor responded with a note encouraging him to keep learning more.
Walker remembers the television portrayals by Barry quite vividly, and credits the television series for showing that not all arguments in the Old West were settled with six shooters.
Masterson started using his famous cane after being shot in the pelvic region, Walker said. The lawman did his best to use his charm and sense of humor to defuse potentially explosive situations, although he could still fire a gun if he had to, Walker said.
Asked whether Masterson used to “bat” people with his cane—as he was occasionally portrayed doing on television—Walker said this was possible, but that one should remember that the television series was probably no more than 20 percent history, compared to 80 percent “Hollywood.”
Masterson is buried in New York State, and Walker said he would like very much if some way could be found to do a DNA test on the Old West lawman’s remains to prove once and for all their kinship.
Actor Barry, who was born to a Jewish family in 1919 as Eugene Klass, was married a half century to Betty Claire Kalb before she died in 2003.
Other series in which Barry starred were “Burke’s Law” and “The Name of the Game.”
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World