Austin developer and former city councilman Barnstone could be quite a character, and we didn’t always get along when he was in politics. But he was one of the first people I met in Austin and I always liked him. I was sorry to hear that he killed himself, still a young sixty-one, but health problems seem to be behind it. I even considered buying one of his first downtown condos, but the price, a mere forty thousand dollars, which is nothing today, seemed too exorbitant for so small a space. Later, I would buy someone else’s near the river for almost twice that and be glad to get it. I wish he had become mayor, as he tried to do in 1991. He would have been a lot of fun at it.
UPDATE: The family’s paid obituary for the Austin daily is here.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 