2025 - Barbara Richardson McClellan

Barbara York Richardson McClellan was born April 12, 1939, in Tyler, Texas. She is a 1957 graduate of John Tyler High School and a 1961 graduate of Baylor University, where she received her Bachelor of Music Education. She completed graduate work at the University of Texas in Tyler, East Texas Baptist University in Marshall, and LeTourneau University in Longview.

She is a devoted wife, mother, and grandmother. She is the widow of Kenneth C. Richardson to whom she was married for 35 years. She re-married to Joe L. McClellan on July 23, 1996. She is the mother to four children, sons, Jeff and John; daughter, Katie; and her late daughter, Karrie.  She is a grandmother to three grandchildren and great-grandmother to two. 

A retired music educator, she served as the choir teacher at Alamo Middle School in Alamo, Texas, for 14 years. Prior to Alamo, she worked for 10 years at Forest Park Middle School in Longview. She also previously served as a music teacher at St. Mary’s Catholic School and kindergarten teacher and director at First Baptist Church, both in Longview. She also previously served as a music teacher at Bell and Birdwell Elementary Schools in Tyler.

Active at church, she previously directed church choirs at First United Methodist Church in Hallsville, First Baptist Church of Longview, and Our Savior Lutheran Church in McAllen. She also was a soloist at Temple Emanu-El in Longview for two years and previously was a member of St. Michael and All Angels’ Episcopal Church in Longview.

As a culinary enthusiast, her food column called “from my kitchen” first debuted in the Longview News-Journal in February 1970. She has consistently written the weekly column for 54 years, soon to be 55 years. She is the author of three cookbooks, “from my kitchen,” “from my kitchen, too,” and “from my kitchen, once more.” She also taught adult, children’s/teen, and men’s cooking classes in both Longview and McAllen.

She is the former accompanist, singer, and arranger for the women’s blues group, “Five Broads Sing the Three B’s.” She wrote, produced, and directed two original musicals, “The Helper’s Magic” and “A New Hansel and Gretel Tale,” with a grant from the Junior League of Longview.

She is a past board member of the St. Mary’s Foundation, the Texas Shakespeare Festival Guild, the Theatre Longview Board of Directors, the Longview Museum of Fine Arts Guild, and the Longview Opera Guild. She is currently a sustainer of the Junior League of Longview and serves on the League’s scholarship committee. She also volunteers at the Longview Arboretum and Nature Center Gift Shop.

Her hobbies include gardening, reading, walking, cooking, singing, acting, attending and participating in music, cooking, and theatre workshops, and “grandmothering.”

With an extensive theatre background, she was active for 25 years in Longview Community Theatre and served as chairperson of the Children’s Theatre Division. She played the role of Golde in three productions of “Fiddler on the Roof”; Yente, the Matchmaker in one production of “Fiddler on the Roof”; Mother Abbess in “The Sound of Music”; Mrs. Sowerberry in “Oliver”; “Lady Angkatell” in “The Hollows”; and various other roles in Longview Community Theatre productions. She also twice portrayed the role of Aunt Thalia in the Longview Museum of Fine Arts melodramas, written by Jan Statman.

When she moved back to Longview from the Valley, she was saddened to learn there was not currently a community theatre in the city as Longview Community Theatre had become inactive. She believed in community theatre and wanted to share the experience she had as both a performer and director with future generations. In 2011, she organized a small group for a meeting and in 2012, that group officially organized as Theatre Longview. Now in its 12th season, Theatre Longview continues to thrive as a premier community theatre organization in the Arts!Longview Cultural District.