BMW Family Reunion

BMW

Barber Mitchell Wyatt family reunion started because of the driving force of several key family members. The trio who were the original organizers were Ruby Barber Jones, Robert Mitchell, and Louis Wyatt. Ruby was the daughter of Charlie Barber, Robert was the son of Nellie Mitchell, and Louis was the son of Maggie Wyatt, thus you have Barber-Mitchell-Wyatt aka BMW. One revision along the way to the BMW acronym was that we had to pay homage to the original spelling of the Barber name which was Barbour in deference to its french heritage. When Charlie Barbour was in the army in WW1 military authorities determined that a black man should not have a french name so they changed the spelling to Barber. However, our acronym remained BMW notwithstanding the reference to the two different spellings.

BMW on the Move

As best we can recollect, what is now known as the BMW reunion started in the late 1960's. For several years the event was hosted in Chicago but eventually we moved around to many different cities. Among our many locations were Charleston, Miss., Los Angeles, Riverside, and Fontana, in California, Kansas City, Atlanta, GA, Nashville, Rockford, Ill, Denver, New Orleans, St. Louis, Arlington, Texas, Charlotte, NC and also in Michigan and Virginia among other locations.

Poised for Future Growth

We're excited about the future and the prospects for new and exciting reunion experiences. Under the leadership of our president Aldo Ross we're just coming off a fantastic reunion experience in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. No family members reside in Myrtle Beach but Aldo put his organizational and logistical skills to good use and planned a fantastic family experience on the beachfront in this resort community. We're now planning the next reunion for Texas in the Dallas/Fort Worth area in 2021.