PARK RIDGE, N.J.—For years, if something important happened in Park Ridge, there was a very good chance Ned Barber was there to document it. For sure, he would have made much of the color, cheer, and stories spilling out of the Pascack Valley’s celebrations around the nation’s 250th birthday.
Barber, the longtime PKRG-TV volunteer and former chairman who died June 14 at age 77 after a five-year battle with vascular dementia, is being remembered for decades spent curating the life of Park Ridge and the Pascack Valley—the meetings, parades, concerts, athletic events, ceremonies and conversations that help define and bind us.
In recognition of those contributions, Park Ridge plans to name the control room at PKRG-TV in Barber’s honor, according to his son, Mike Barber, and Ned’s successor, Howard Fredrics.
“He really wanted to see history documented before it was kind of lost to time,” said Mike Barber, a Park Ridge High School graduate who now serves as editor in chief of CVille Right Now, a local news organization serving Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Va.
Mike Barber and his sister, Ashley Heger, grew up on Queen Court. Both graduated from Park Ridge High School, where their father became a familiar presence through his work with PKRG-TV.
Mike Barber’s own career followed a path that echoed many of the values his father embraced. After graduating from PRHS, he worked at Major League Baseball and The Star-Ledger before moving to Virginia in 2002 to cover James Madison University football. He later spent more than a decade covering Virginia Tech and University of Virginia athletics for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Following a 2024 layoff, he freelanced for The Washington Post, the Virginian-Pilot and the Associated Press before becoming editor in chief of CVille Right Now in 2025.
Mike Barber recalled that his father became involved with PKRG-TV around 1997. Drawing on experience producing closed-circuit television programming for hospitals, Ned Barber volunteered countless hours covering Borough Council meetings, town picnics, parades, school concerts and community events.
Working with the Fire Department, he also documented firefighters responding to structure fires and recorded the community’s experience during Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy.
“It was sort of a combination of journalism and, and historian,” Mike Barber told Pascack Press on July 5. “He just really wanted to see history documented before it was kind of lost to time.”
In 2005, Barber founded the Pascack Valley History Project, an oral-history effort dedicated to preserving the memories of longtime residents and local historians.
“What do people see, feel, think in the moment?” Mike Barber said. “Dad was big on that.”
He continued: “It’s that firsthand history, right? It’s more than just, you know, documenting when something opened or closed.”
Many of those interviews and recordings remain available through PKRG-TV and on Barber’s YouTube channels.
The station’s online archive reflects the kind of community record Barber believed was worth preserving. Alongside government meetings are Memorial Day parades, town picnics, school sports, historical lectures, concerts, Veterans Day ceremonies, wellness programs and interviews—a running chronicle of life in Park Ridge.
His work also became woven into school life. Barber recorded concerts, marching band competitions, theatrical productions, Mr. and Mrs. Park Ridge High School programs, and Athletic Hall of Fame inductions. Mike Barber recalled his father’s close relationships with choir director Dr. Patrick Finley, band director Rick Popolizio and theater director Robert Thoman, who was also Mike’s first journalism teacher.
“As a kid, I don’t think it even registers how much Dad was doing in the community,” Mike Barber said. “You know, for me it was more sometimes he wasn’t home for dinner because he went to a town council meeting.”
“But then you look back and take the totality of it and you realize, God, he preserved and recorded so much history of our town, of the Pascack Valley,” he said. “Looking back on it, it’s very impressive.”
Mayor Keith Misciagna recently called Barber “a gentleman” whose “dedication to PKRG-TV and his love for the Park Ridge community left a lasting impact on our borough.”
Howard Fredrics remembered him as “a good friend and trusted advisor while I was learning the ropes of managing the station.”
He told us July 7, “We are indeed planning on re-naming the control room the Ned Barber PKRG-TV Control Room. I am looking at plaques to design and purchase, and then once we have that plaque, we’ll do a little dedication ceremony. Not sure how elaborate that ceremony will end up being, but I anticipate the process to happen this summer or by early September.”
Moreover, the station invites all interested to watch a brief video it produced in memory of Ned Barber, “which was made from still images from a range of programs in which Ned was featured. We hope that it captures some of his essence.”
Barber, a published author with a doctorate in psychology, was remembered by his family as generous, funny, hardworking and deeply devoted to education, the arts, photography and videography.
In the obituary he wrote for his father, Mike Barber recalled that before internet search engines, family members “didn’t Ask Jeeves. They asked Dad.”
His son also sees his father’s influence in his own work.
“He thought it was so important to know what was going on in your community and to document it,” Mike Barber said. “It’s kind of interesting that at this point in my life I’ve found myself in a job where that’s, that’s my role now is to document what’s happening in, you know, a different community here in Charlottesville, Virginia, but the same goals really that Dad had.”
His greatest legacy: family. Ned is survived by his wife Toni; his son, Michael Barber and his wife, Elizabeth; and his daughter Ashley Heger and her husband, Chris. He is also survived by his sister, Elizabeth Kinslinger; grandchildren Evan Barber, Amelia Ballester, and James Heger; his niece Karen Kinslinger, his nephew Richard Kinslinger, his sister-in-law Ann Tempel and her husband, Thomas O’Hanlon.