Barry Sholin
A Celebration of Life

May 6, 1943 – April 25, 2021

Thank you to the friends and family
who joined us in a celebration of Barry’s life on May 7, 2021.

Donations

Please consider honoring Barry’s memories of hiking, canoeing, and camping in the American wilderness with a donation to the Sierra Club at https://sierraclub.org or make a donation to Capital Caring at https://www.capitalcaring.org/ to support the hospice organization that helped make his last days comfortable at home.

Obituary

Barry M. Sholin of Ashburn, Virginia, died at 77 years old, peacefully at home on April 25, 2021, after living with cancer for nine years. Born May 6, 1943 in Trenton, New Jersey, to Rose (Weis) and Harry Sholin, Barry was pretty much taller than anyone related to him, including his older brother Jerry, by the time the family moved to Miami in the early 1950s. 

A graduate of North Miami Senior High School, Barry took the Pioneer spirit to heart, exploring colleges in multiple states before joining the U.S. Army, learning how to “jump” out of airplanes — he would always explain it was more like getting pushed — and spending a tour of duty stationed in Germany in the late 1960s.

By the end of 1970, Barry had started two things back in South Florida: A career in real estate data, and a family. Over the better part of the next 50 years, he played every role in the real estate information industry, from aerial photographer to print shop head to sales and marketing lead to buyer and seller of data from various public and private sources, as the Internet grew up around him and the landscape shifted from microfiche to hard disks to cloud storage. 

Meanwhile, Barry and his first wife, Marilyn (Bunin), had two sons — Craig and Ryan. Barry and Ryan made father-son camping trips an annual highlight, from canoeing on the Peace River in Central Florida, to carrying their canoes across innumerable portages in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, to waiting patiently for bear families to descend from trees in the Porcupine Mountains of Michigan (the Upper Peninsula), to baking apple pies in the bear country of the Superior Hiking Trail in the Great Lakes, to climbing Half Dome in Yosemite in the middle of a much longer backpacking trip through the backcountry, and yes, there were bears there, too.

Barry’s work and aforementioned pioneering spirit would take him to Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles, before retiring. In retirement, he chased his grandchildren to Rochester, New York, and later to Loudoun County, Virginia.

Work did not define Barry, but being an outdoorsman came awfully close. Barry was known for hiking, backcountry camping, cross-country skiing, whitewater canoeing, more casual canoeing (except for that one time with the alligator), horseback riding, and spent a good portion of his time since moving to Loudoun County in 2009 cutting brush, pulling weeds, and maintaining gardens as a volunteer at the Banshee Reeks Nature Preserve and the Rust Nature Sanctuary. 

In Virginia, he also found love, and married Sally Mallison in 2019. The years Barry and Sally had together brightened the lives of all those around them, and their extended families. Themselves an interfaith marriage, Barry and Sally became fixtures at the Interfaith Families Project of Greater Washington D.C. (IFFP), where his son, and his wife, and the grandchildren attend Sunday School and religious services.

Barry was preceded in death by his parents, Rose and Harry, his son Craig, and his brother Jerry. Barry is survived by his wife, Sally Mallison, his son, Ryan Sholin, Ryan’s wife Veronica, and their children, Eliana and Gabriel, all residing in Ashburn, Virginia. He will be missed by friends from work, outdoor organizations, IFFP, and elsewhere, as well as the extended Sholin and Weis families, among others.

Contact

Contact Ryan Sholin at ryansholin@gmail.com with questions.