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REFLECTING ITS OWNER: Clara Barton's house in Glen Echo, Md., was her home, but the "Angel of the Battlefield" also used it as headquarters for the American Red Cross, a warehouse and living quarters for Red Cross workers. Everything about the place conveyed Barton's sense of duty, commitment and dedication to serving others. The National Park Service offers guided tours hourly, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free. Large-group reservations, 301/320-1410; nps.gov/clba.

September 22, 2007 12:35 am

THERE ARE many lessons to be learned from the life of one of the most remarkable and unusual people this nation has produced.

Her name was Clara Barton, and she has long been known to schoolchildren across America as the founder of the American Red Cross. That much is true, but it is woefully insufficient.

On our recent visit to Glen Echo Park in the Maryland suburbs, I walked over to Barton's home--hidden behind trees near the old amusement park. After all, I really knew nothing more about this American icon than her Red Cross connection.

Her old home, now a national historic landmark, is interesting enough, with its huge interior (not all of it open to the public) and somewhat Spartan furnishings. But the building, which also served as the first headquarters of the American Red Cross and as a warehouse for disaster-relief supplies, only hints at the life and personality of its designer and celebrated resident.

While Barton is well known for establishing the Red Cross in the United States, she had a number of other careers, each of them standing out in some way.

During the Civil War, Barton, who previously spent years as a teacher and a principal, insisted on going to the front lines of major battles, where she worked under heavy fire tending the wounded.

She toiled feverishly, and generally alone, at many of the war's largest battles--including Fredericksburg, the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House. At Chantilly, an Army surgeon said in awe that Barton brought desperately needed supplies to field hospitals and worked on the wounded for five days in pouring rain--on two hours' sleep.

Born in 1821 in North Duxford, Mass., Barton was the youngest of five children and came along 10 years after her next-youngest sibling. She was an unusual child who had an unusual upbringing. She once said that, as a child, she had no friends and six teachers.

As an adult, she was intense and exceptionally bright--a driven, focused person who insisted on doing everything herself. She was independent to a fault. That trait would be both her greatest asset and--to her critics later in the Red Cross--her greatest flaw. She did not work well with others.

But oh, how she could work! Throughout her life, Barton was a woman of action, always at her best when she had a cause to throw herself into.

When the action was over--whether on the battlefield or at the scene of a natural disaster--Barton often lapsed into bouts of what we would call depression, even despondency. The only sure cure always seemed to be the next big challenge, when she would snap right out of it.

With the Civil War ended, Barton went through a series of brief jobs, including a year running a women's reformatory in Massachusetts. One of her major contributions after the war was to persuade the federal government to create an office, which she headed, to handle the cases of thousands of Union soldiers unaccounted for at the close of the conflict.

Following another of her emotional collapses, Barton made a trip to Europe. It was on this journey that she came into contact with efforts to bring the United States into the international treaty establishing the Red Cross. When she returned to her homeland, it became her newest cause, a major struggle. Barton, by this time no stranger to Washington, its leaders and the levers of power, went straight to the top, seeking presidential backing for the new treaty.

It was this effort, involving intense lobbying of the White House and Congress, that lead to the 1882 ratification of the treaty, thus creating the American Red Cross.

Barton, elected the organization's first president, held that position for the next 22 years. In that time, she was directly involved in relief work for dozens of disasters and calamities.

By the close of the 19th century, the Red Cross, which had seen so many successes, had grown into a large organization--one that had essentially outgrown the micromanaging style of its founding leader.

Clara Barton, overachiever, was anything but a bureaucrat and a team player, and the fledgling, rapidly expanding American Red Cross needed precisely those qualities at the helm at the turn of the new century. It has been said that Barton did not know how to delegate authority, which appears to be true.

This, in turn, inevitably led to strife within the organization and, eventually, to the overthrow of its heroic founder, in 1904. She was 83.

Barton was initially bitter--who wouldn't be?--but soon turned her energies to new fields. Within a year, she had seen with her customary clarity the need for first aid--immediate emergency medical treatment at the scene of accidents and other calamities.

Seeing this unfilled need, in 1905 Barton established the National First Aid Society to help communities around the country prepare to deal with immediate emergencies. This, at age 84.

The remainder of her life at Glen Echo and at her summer home in Massachusetts continued to be full of activity--writing memoirs, making speeches, gardening and more.

Clara Barton died of double pneumonia at age 90, at Glen Echo.

She was, according to one historian, perhaps the most honored woman in American history. And yet the accolades showered upon her in her lifetime were entirely from abroad. She was never officially decorated or honored by her own government.