A love for one horse inspired Gina Barry ’94 to start a sanctuary for others.
A good chunk of every weekday, Gina Barry ’94, Esq., wears a business suit and works in a professional office suite. More specifically, she spends her time helping clients navigate complex legal issues at Bacon Wilson, P.C., in Springfield and Northampton, Massachusetts, where she is a partner and chair of the Estate Planning and Elder Law Department.
Before that, though, nearly every morning, and even on weekends, she puts on casual clothes and heads to a much different kind of workplace, Legacy Farm in Easthampton.
The farm is home of the Legacy Equine & Therapy Center, owned by the Page family, and also home to Joy of Jasper, a nonprofit horse sanctuary Barry founded in 2007.
As an estate planning and elder law attorney, “I couldn’t be in a better spot,” Barry said. “I’m using my brain, and it’s very people-focused. I’ve got the intellectual challenge, but also the connection to people and animals. It’s all worked out. Sometimes you just have to trust and believe.”
The connection between those two aspects of her life — helping elders plan their futures and tending to horses in their twilight years — is not lost on Barry.
“The parallel is that I help older people and I help older horses,” she said.
Over the past 19 years, Joy of Jasper has provided a safe and loving haven for 20 abused, abandoned, neglected, or unwanted horses and ponies. Barry, through her nonprofit, has acquired some from slaughterhouses, some from the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, others directly from their owners. She even found one listed in a Craigslist ad. The sanctuary has no paid staff and relies on the generosity of donors and volunteers, many of them children, who help care for the animals. (Barry serves as president and has a volunteer board of directors.)
Two aspects of Barry’s life are helping elders plan their futures and tending to horses in their twilight years.
Because of their previous living conditions, the horses often arrive with unique physical ailments and diseases, requiring special attention. Some days, Barry spends hours at the farm administering medication and grooming the horses.
At the moment, Joy of Jasper owns three horses: Monty, Sgt. Pepper, and Bernard. Monty is a mid-20s quarter horse Barry adopted from another equine sanctuary that shut down. Twenty-year-old Bernard, or “Nardy,” suffers from a degenerative bone disease in his hooves and has an arthritic spine, so can’t be ridden by adults. Sgt. Pepper, the Craigslist pony, had become feral after being abandoned in a field for several years before Barry acquired him. Thanks to Joy of Jasper, the once fiery, mistrusting pony eventually reconnected with people, Barry said.
During a visit to the farm one afternoon in June, Barry came equipped with a large bag of peppermints, treats for the horses — hers and the farm’s other residents — who emerge from their stalls and walk to the limits of their fenced enclosures when they see her coming. On this day, Barry wore trail shoes, blue denim jeans, and a green Joy of Jasper T-shirt, which said, on the back, “Have You Felt the Joy of Jasper?”
In starting the sanctuary, Barry sought partly to create a space for people who want to spend time with horses but perhaps can’t afford to.
in 2023.
“The horses don’t have to have a great resume to come here,” she said. “They just have to be a horse in need. The Joy of Jasper is the joy of the horse knowing that they don’t have to worry about where their home will be, and the joy of the person who comes and receives all the gifts from them in terms of the trust and love.”
The story behind Joy of Jasper begins long before Barry earned her law degree from Western New England, or her bachelor’s degree from Westfield State, or even her associate degree from HCC.
She grew up in a working-class family in Holyoke, raised by her parents, Joseph Barry, a welder, and Linda Barry, a waitress. As a young child, she had always expressed a love of horses, even though she had never seen one in person.
When she was about 9, her father saw a newspaper ad for a 4-H group at the Therapeutic Equestrian Center at Jericho on Northampton Street in Holyoke, not far from the home she grew up in and still lives. The center was operated by Geraldine (O’Connor) Page and her husband Bill, now the owners of Legacy Farm in Easthampton.
Barry and the other young girls in 4-H were responsible for a variety of barn chores, including cleaning up manure, changing the urine-soaked bedding in the horse stalls, and other tasks most of the members did not enjoy. One by one, they all dropped out, leaving only Gina.
“Doing all that work didn’t bother me,” she said. “It didn’t matter. That’s what I had to do to see horses. In the end, it was just me and Gerry. She poured so much of her energy and horse knowledge into me.”
Page connected Barry with Jasper, a quarter horse from Montana who had come to the center underweight, with a dull coat, and eyes “full of worry, having lost his former home,” Barry remembers.
At the same time, Barry was herself struggling with an unsettled home life due to her father’s post-traumatic stress after having served as a helicopter gunner during the Vietnam War.
Through shared moments, Barry and Jasper bonded, blossomed, and healed together. Page gave Barry riding lessons, and Barry and Jasper competed in local horse shows, often taking home top ribbons. Barry remembers a glorious summer as an 11-year-old who had found seemingly unending joy with Jasper.
“From the moment they came together, there was something gentle and unmistakable between them,” recalls Gerry Page. “Jasper had a calm presence that seemed to draw Gina in. For a teenager navigating change, emotions, and growing independence, Jasper became more than just a horse. He was a trusted companion. He taught her responsibility, confidence, and the value of caring for another living being.”
“He and I could talk to one another — I know that sounds insane,” Barry said. “What he provided were moments of unconditional love, of trust, just everything you would want. I could just be myself.”
Then, the unthinkable. In the fall of 1984, Jasper tripped and shattered the bone in his hoof, a debilitating injury that could not be fixed. He had to be euthanized.
The quiet, calm, and predictable existence Barry felt with Jasper was gone too.
“There are literally no English words for what I felt,” she said. “It was horrible. Nobody knew what to do with me. Everybody tried. My grief was beyond anything they were capable of dealing with.”
For a while, Barry stayed at the center and worked with other horses, but could not connect with any of them like she had with Jasper. Eventually, she left.
Fast forward to Barry’s entry into HCC in 1990. She admits not taking her classes seriously her first year. In her second year, though, a classmate made a remark she will never forget:
“You couldn’t get an A if you tried.”
Game on. From that moment, Barry applied herself in the classroom, getting mostly straight A’s and earning her associate degree in four years, as she worked several jobs to put herself through school.
She looks back at her time at HCC as setting the foundation for her career.
Barry looks back at her time at HCC as setting the foundation for her career.
“If I hadn’t gone to HCC, I wouldn’t have gone to Westfield State; I wouldn’t have gone to Western New England,” she said. “The whole path unfolded from HCC, and HCC gave me an opportunity to be a 17-year-old girl with no idea what I wanted. My parents never went to college. I never even took the SATs. Without HCC, there is no Attorney Barry. The path would have never opened.”
In the early 2000s, Barry began taking leadership training with Tony Robbins, the nationally recognized self-help coach and motivational speaker. She was trying to figure out how to go beyond what her family had achieved, how to make something of herself. But there was something missing — and a whole lot of healing that hadn’t happened yet.
She got the idea for Joy of Jasper during one specific training exercise when Robbins asked the group to remember a place where they had felt unconditional love and complete trust.
Barry thought of Jasper.
“Memories of being in his stall and sitting on a bucket and him falling asleep with his head in my lap. That is what I went back to,” she said. “And I remember thinking how crazy it is that the huge wound that I received from him turned out to be the catalyst for all of this. If he had passed in a different way, I don’t think Joy of Jasper would exist. Because this was my catharsis.”
Barry said she has seen that same connection, healing, and catharsis in the more than 100 children and young adults who have volunteered with Joy of Jasper through the years.
When she started the nonprofit, she boarded her horses at the Therapeutic Equestrian Center at Jericho, where she had first met Jasper. When the center closed in 2025, she moved Joy of Jasper to Legacy Farm.
“I have watched some of our kids go from failing out of high school to going to college,” she said. “We had one young man whose father was in jail. He was probably destined for a similar path. He just graduated from junior high and is going to Springfield Honors Academy, which is a big deal.”
Besides HCC and her other educational endeavors, Barry credits Bacon Wilson with teaching her the know-how and skills to start a nonprofit.
“As a young lawyer, I sat on many boards, and that is how I learned how boards operated, so when it was time to start a nonprofit, I knew what to do,” she said.
Bacon Wilson was also extremely supportive of her work with Joy of Jasper, including being an original and continuing sponsor.
Meanwhile, Barry’s connection to HCC remains strong. Over the years, she has returned to campus to share the story of her college experience and how it was instrumental in shaping her life, and also to discuss the importance of planned giving at events sponsored by HCC’s Institutional Advancement division.
As she looks to the future and continues her work at Joy of Jasper, she is reminded of the love, care, and lifeline the horses there receive, even though she knows, ultimately, she will lose them again.
“Nothing is promised,” she said. “You treat every day like it’s their last and just cherish every moment. And I will tell you that I have never lost the awe for horses. I always look at them and think, I am so lucky.”
