Barbara’s Story

Barbara Getty, a native of Portland, Oregon, has had a lifelong passion for letters. “I had been fascinated with letterforms since I was in grade school,”  Barbara said. “When I was in seventh grade at Gregory Heights  School, our teacher Miss Johanns wrote perfect looped cursive. I  was mesmerized when she wrote on the chalkboard.”

Barbara graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music from Lewis & Clark College. Her career has spanned various roles, including bank secretary, church organist, and elementary school teacher for fourteen years in the Beaverton School District, as well as in Turkey and Pennsylvania. In 1970, when Barbara was taking a break from teaching to pursue her master’s degree in teaching at Lewis & Clark, she met Inga Dubay, who was to become a lifelong friend and teaching partner.

“We met in Maury Nemoy’s flat-brush calligraphy workshop at Oregon School of Art and Craft,” Barbara explained. “It was 1970 and Lloyd Reynolds was in the class, along with my teacher Jaki Svaren and Inga’s teacher Lois McClelland.” 

During her undergraduate studies, Barbara missed the opportunity to take a calligraphy class taught by Norman Paasche due to scheduling conflicts. Ironically, she would later replace him as the college’s calligraphy instructor. She taught at Lewis & Clark for two years until the college replaced its weaving and calligraphy courses with photography. Barbara’s passion for calligraphy deepened, especially during her training with Jaki Svaren from 1968 to 1974.

Barbara enjoyed teaching students of all ages and backgrounds, particularly when observing the progress of absolute beginners. One of her standout students was Fran Strom Sloan, a fellow teacher at Aloha Park School. Barbara remembers: “We were both teaching at Aloha Park School in the Beaverton School District. She taught fourth grade, and I taught first grade. We became friends, and occasionally I’d visit her classroom at the end of the day. Her handwriting on the board was so illegible I wondered how her students could decipher it, so I suggested she take my evening calligraphy course at Rock Creek. It was probably spring 1972 when she began taking my Rock Creek course. The rest is history!” 

An internationally recognized calligrapher and authority on italic handwriting, Barbara has inspired over 4,000 people—including many medical professionals—to write with legibility and ease. She co-authored ten books with Inga, including the acclaimed Write Now: The Getty-Dubay Program for Handwriting Success, Italic Letters: Calligraphy and Handwriting, and the Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting Series for adults. Her work has gained national attention, being featured  on programs like Good Morning America and in over 75 publications, including TIME, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.

Barbara and Inga have presented 170 “Rx for Handwriting Success” seminars for medical professionals across the United States, and they have shared their expertise at international conferences, including the World Health Organization in Copenhagen and the International Patient Safety Conference in Florence. 

For thirty years, Barbara taught as an adjunct professor of calligraphy and handwriting at Portland Community College, Portland State University and Lewis & Clark College. 

Barbara has observed, “Calligraphy is meditative. You’re by yourself. You become centered. I often wake up in the morning and think about letters.” 

Compiled from the PSC 50th Anniversary book