Bill Barefoot was an encouraging presence to customers, colleagues – and even competitors – in his years as a med/surg rep in Western Pennsylvania.
Growing up, Kevin Barefoot remembers how much he enjoyed watching how his father Bill went about his work as a medical sales rep. “I liked how my dad balanced his work and life and was available for us for certain events; coaching baseball, taking us to hockey tournaments all over the northern United States and Canada,” said Kevin.
Kevin and his brother David would sometimes go on appointments with Bill while their mom taught art classes at Carnegie Mellon University. They’d hang out in purchasing with the folks there and color or draw while Bill would put on sterile processing gear and go to the OR to talk to clinicians. “I always thought, ‘Man, this is cool,’” Kevin recalled. “My dad is some kind of doctor or something, but he sells stuff.’ I didn’t really understand it, but I thought it was neat because I felt like he was helping people in healthcare.”
Indeed, Bill’s legacy positively affected an incredible amount of people in the med/surg community, according to those who spoke with Repertoire Magazine. He also helped pave the way for sons Kevin, who is a partner at MTMC and David, who is currently a territory manager for Flexicare Medical.
Bill Barefoot, aged 81, passed away on July 8, 2024, in Pittsburgh. Born Feb. 1, 1943, Bill was a beloved husband, father, grandfather, brother, and friend.
He was a man whose life was a testament to the joy of simple pleasures, according to a written tribute of him. Bill’s love story with his wife, Patricia, spanned over 70 years, beginning in their youth and blossoming into a marriage of 58 years. He relished time at his pool with his family and friends, especially his six grandchildren.
Barefoot’s award-winning sales career spanned over four decades, including time at Stuart Medical and Owens & Minor
Larry Conley first met Bill Barefoot as a competitor. In the early 1980s, Conley worked for Stuart’s Drug and Surgical Supply, Inc., while Barefoot worked in the same territory for Wilbur Ross. After a couple of years, Barefoot came to work for Stuart’s.
Eventually Stuart’s was sold to the Hillman Company in the late ’80s. Conley would leave to start his own business in the medical field. Barefoot stayed, and when the company was eventually purchased by Owens & Minor, he continued on as a sales rep for quite a few years more.
“We were very close,” Conley said. Barefoot’s son Kevin and Conley’s son Michael grew up as friends and played hockey together since they were 8 years old.
“I can honestly tell you this, in all the years that I’ve known Bill, which goes back to the early 1980s, Bill never had a bad day,” Conley said. “He was always very open, very happy, willing to help you. He was one of those people who never had a bad day. You never saw him cross, you never saw him get upset. He always had a smile on his face and was always dressed impeccably. At the time, we were all wearing suits, and Bill was always the sharpest dressed guy.”
Barefoot was truly concerned about his customers, Conley said. He never spoke ill about anybody, least of all a customer. If he lost some business or an account, he never disparaged the person who got the business from him. “Bill would always just work harder trying to get it back, but he was never down.”
Knowledge and warmth
Tim Nedley first met Barefoot in 1992 as a new manager at Stuart’s. Nedley ran the night shift warehouse at the time. He was young, in his mid-20s, while Barefoot was a veteran rep in his late 40s.
“I was an operations guy in a room full of salespeople, and normally salespeople and operations people didn’t always mix,” Nedley said. The first thing Nedley remembers about Barefoot was how kind and warm he was. “When I think of him, I think of the smile on his face, and you’d probably hear that from other people,” said Nedley. “He was respectful of me as a very young manager with a fair amount of responsibility. I could ask him questions and not feel like it was a dumb question.”
Nedley would eventually make the shift to the provider side of the supply chain at UPMC in Pittsburgh. His duties included distribution center operations and hospital operations, and he had lots of opportunities to work with Barefoot. “We picked up where we had left off,” Nedley said. “I spent nine years in North Carolina before my time at UPMC and didn’t get a lot of face time with Bill then, but I would call him to pick his brain and ask him some questions when I needed some clarity. But it was great to be back in the saddle and working with him on a weekly basis.”
Bill was one of the few people that Nedley came across with both the knowledge and the personal skills to have everybody want to work with him. “I don’t know that there are many people out there that I’ve worked with in my 30 some years that had both of those things,” he said. “There are a lot of people with really good knowledge and cruddy personal skills, and then there are a lot of people with great personal skills that just don’t have the knowledge. Bill put it all together and never made you feel like a burden when you had questions for him.”
Kevin said his father had a knack for making people feel comfortable around him. “I never heard of a customer or anyone else ever getting mad at him,” he said.
People gravitated toward Barefoot. Kevin said he can remember being in high school and sometimes listening around the corner when his father was on the phone with a customer. “Especially as I got older, I got a little more interested thinking, ‘someday I’m going to have to have a career. I want to hear what this is all about,’” Kevin said. “I can remember these people wanting to just talk about their personal lives for a while. It was like he was a therapist for some of these people. They were customers but they were also friends.”
Barefoot was always fair with people, Conley said. During the ’80s, private label products started to come into fruition. “As a rep, it meant you could keep your margins up by selling something that maybe wasn’t as high quality as the manufactured products in the U.S.,” Conley said.
Barefoot never did that. If it wasn’t a good quality piece, he would not sell it. “People would try to tell him, ‘Bill, you could sell this and make more margin for yourself.’ Keep in mind that in those days, we were all on commission,” said Conley. “You made a percentage of the gross profit, so it would behoove you to increase your gross profit. Some guys did that. Bill would always look at the price, but then look at the quality of the product, and if it didn’t meet up, he would never go out and push something just to make more money off of that item.”
People in the industry respected that over the years. “If he brought something into a hospital to sell, his customers always felt that it was a quality piece,” Conley said. “It wasn’t something that he was trying to sell just to make more money.”
Personal encouragement
In the early ’90s, Russ Haythorn was a buyer at UPMC, and Barefoot would call on Haythorn as a sales rep for Owens & Minor. “Bill always had a smile on his face, and he was always telling a little joke,” said Haythorn, now Director of Procurement Services at Allegheny Health Network. “Bill wasn’t a stereotypical sales rep. He had the best interest of his company and your company in mind, so he wasn’t trying to make an extra buck or pull a fast one on you. He had a high level of integrity.”
Haythorn said as the years went by, he came to know Bill and his wife Patty on a personal level outside of work. “Bill and his wife Patty gave us some insight into adoption,” said Haythorn. The Barefoots adopted domestically and were supportive of the Haythorn’s eventual international adoption of their daughter. “We were having trouble having a family, and the Barefoots helped us get over the hurdle of making that decision, that it really doesn’t matter where your child comes from, they just immediately become an integral part of your family and you love them just the same as you would any other.”
At some point the two families realized they lived close to one another, maybe two miles apart. The Barefoots lived next to a big church in the community that had a light up night around the holidays and would always invite the Haythorns over to celebrate.
“They’ve always wanted to know how our daughter was doing,” Haythorn said. “Bill and I had breakfast around Thanksgiving last year and he was still asking about our daughter and how she was doing. She’s 22 now.”
Meeting “the mayor”
Barefoot was like the “Mayor of Western Pennsylvania’s supply chain,” said Chad DiNunzio, executive account director, Integrated Delivery Networks, Medline Industries. DiNunzio started at Medline in June 2000 and competed for business with Barefoot in the early 2000s.
“Back in the day, you would have a sign-in sheet at the materials management office,” DiNunzio said. “You would sign in and sit in the waiting room before you’d be allowed back to talk to a materials manager. Of course, you would look at the logbook to see who signed it before you. Often, I would see Bill’s name. It seemed like we were on the same itinerary, but I was always a step behind Bill. He would come over and pat me on the shoulder and say, ‘good luck kid.’”
Barefoot was always gracious to DiNunzio, even though they were competitors. “In a way, he took me under his wing and would give me some pointers,” DiNunzio said. “Clearly, he had no reason to do that whatsoever, outside of just being a really good person. We became friends, and I also became friends with his son, Kevin, who was a contemporary of mine.”
A great mentor and friend
Nedley said it was always fun when Bill was around. Even if people were having a bad day, Barefoot would encourage people to get the work done without taking themselves too seriously in the process.
“That’s probably the legacy I take away from him,” Nedley said. “I’ve always said that if I’m not having fun, it’s time to do something else – and that’s Bill’s impact on my career, because he was fantastic. It’s just boiling it down and saying, ‘Let’s take a minute. Let’s think about this and look at the big picture.’”
Conley believes Barefoot’s business legacy in Western Pennsylvania is second to none as far as medical distribution is concerned. “He was a great mentor to some of the people that came after him that were hired at Stuart’s. They always looked up to him,” he said. “Bill never dodged a phone call. He would always answer the phone and do whatever he could to help you out.”