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Never to be Forgotten, Remembering D.J. Barrett
5/27/2020 10:00:00 AM | Baseball, Football
A Little League teammate, a high school classmate, a college roommate, a first love — every so often someone shows up on the doorstep of your life destined to never be forgotten. Wherever you go, whatever you do, a piece of them is always tagging along for the ride.
For Peter Foor, a retired Superior Court judge in Solano County, California, life's journey took him to Vietnam, where he was a decorated Marine lieutenant, and to Alaska, where he was a commercial fisherman. He attended law school, worked in private practice as well as a deputy district attorney, and spent 13 years trying a host of high profile cases for notorious clients as a public defender, before being appointed to the bench and presiding for more than 20 years, 1997-2018.
Through all of those experiences and more, he's never forgotten a young man he knew for barely eight months: D.J. Barrett, a fellow platoon commander with whom he served in the Vietnam War.
"It's been 45 years now, and there's hardly a day goes by that I don't think of him," Foor said during an interview seven years ago. "Certainly not a week. He'll always be 23 to me. I can see his face, his laugh. He was just a wonderful guy."
That sentiment is shared by many others whose lives intersected with Drew James Barrett III, a former Duke football and baseball player killed in Vietnam in 1969 just two months after his 24th birthday.
Allen Cohen spent only six months with Barrett, when they were classmates in Basic School at Quantico, Va., on their way to receiving their commissions as U.S. Marine Corps officers. They never crossed paths in Vietnam, but their brief time together resonated long afterward.
"He befriended everybody and was a true leader of men," Cohen recalled. "He was a great human being and I've never forgotten him. He's one of those people who makes an impact on your life."
One of Barrett's Duke classmates and football teammates, Durham native Page Wilson, still tears up when he thinks about college experiences shared with Barrett more than a half-century ago.
"Every year we have these football weekends where all the guys come back," he noted, "and there's not a year we don't talk about D.J. Not one. About how we wish he could be with us and how much more fun it would be if he was here. And we all mean it."
He was listed as Jim Barrett on the Duke football and baseball rosters of the mid-1960s, but most everyone knew him as D.J. The son of a career Marine officer, he was born during World War II in Denver and moved around a lot growing up. He came to Duke from Camp Lejeune High School on the Marine base in Jacksonville, N.C., after previously attending Robert E. Lee High in Springfield, Va.
Barrett played for the freshman football and baseball teams during his first year at Duke, 1963-64, then moved up to the varsity for his sophomore and junior years. Listed at 5-foot-11 and 180 pounds, he was described in the football media guide as tough, quick and a fast runner with good ability. Teammate Wilson said his toughness stood out more than his speed.
"He loved to hit, he loved contact and he had the respect of his teammates," Wilson recalled. "He was a very good football player. He didn't have a lot of raw talent, but he sure made up for it with grit and determination and heart and soul… He was just a great guy… one of the most popular guys on the team. Everybody loved him."
Barrett's best stretch athletically at Duke was the calendar year of 1965 when he played for two university legends who were coaching in their final seasons — although no one knew that at the time.
As a sophomore in the spring of '65, he was the starting third baseman for coach Ace Parker's Blue Devil baseball contingent. Parker batted him in the leadoff position for the season opener against Dartmouth and he singled to start Duke's half of the first inning, then came around to score the first run of the year. He remained at leadoff for the rest of the 25-game schedule and virtually never left the lineup. He batted .218 and shared the team lead in runs scored.
It was a hectic semester as Barrett was also involved in spring football practice under head coach Bill Murray. Preseason baseball workouts and football drills overlapped for about three weeks and Barrett kept up with both, reporting to the diamond from 1-3 p.m. and to the gridiron from 4-6 p.m. most afternoons. He played in the Blue-White spring football game on Mar. 20, then it was on to baseball fulltime for the Mar. 24 opener.
When the 1965 grid campaign rolled around, Murray had decided to go back to two-platoon football and Barrett, now a junior, earned a first-team position as the left safety in the defensive secondary. He started every contest, picked off passes against Rice and Wake Forest, made a big stop on a two-point conversion in a 21-13 victory over Pitt and helped the Blue Devils rout UNC 34-7 in the season finale. Murray announced his retirement to his players in the locker room immediately following the game, closing the book on his 15 seasons at the helm. When Parker, the backfield coach, was not named the successor, he turned in his resignation as well.
Tom Harp was hired to replace Murray and Barrett went through spring practice under the new regime, but he never made it to his senior year of 1966-67. With his father now a faculty member at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., Barrett joined the Marine Corps. Wilson suspects he would have eventually returned to finish school, but he was not surprised to see Barrett enlist.
"He always wanted to be a Marine," Wilson remembered. "He loved the Marines. He's the kind of guy if you had to share a foxhole with somebody, he'd be the one you'd share the foxhole with because you could count on him. He was dependable, reliable."
After Basic School, Barrett was commissioned as a lieutenant and assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment. He arrived in Vietnam during the summer of 1968 as a platoon commander for the Kilo Company. There were three rifle platoons in the company, led by lieutenants Barrett, Foor and John Joyce, another 24-year-old former college baseball player from North Dakota. They were involved in several missions together, including Operation Meade, a fierce engagement in the Dodge City area of South Vietnam.
Foor vividly recalls an unusual night that Barrett enjoyed with his father late in 1968. Colonel Barrett was in the area and wanted to have dinner with his son. Foor and Joyce both wanted to accompany him, but one lieutenant had to stay with the troops so the two staged a shooting contest to make the decision. Each enlisted one of their M79 grenade launchers to see who could get closest to hitting a tree about 400-500 yards away. Joyce's guy won, so he joined Lt. Barrett on a helicopter flight into Da Nang for an evening with Col. Barrett.
"Everybody was talking about it for weeks," Foor said. "It was really something, because sometimes we would be out in the field for four, five, six weeks in a row and wouldn't even get a shower or anything, just eating C-rats (rations). So this was a very special thing."
Foor spent a lot of time with Barrett and said D.J. had plenty of positive things to say about his college experience. He recognized Barrett's athleticism and remembers him writing home frequently.
"He was passionate about his family; he was very proud of his dad and he was also proud of being in the Marine Corps and being part of the effort over there. We all were.
"We didn't talk so much then about a future that was maybe there, maybe not. D.J. was more interested in the day-to-day things. He talked a lot about things out in the field," Foor continued. "What he was really looking forward to was some R&R. He'd never gone on R&R. We had a funny conversation about that one time. I think he was looking forward to going down to Australia, but I don't think he really cared where he was going — he was just looking forward to getting the hell out of there for a while."
Tragically, Barrett never had the opportunity to take leave for some rest and recuperation. In late February of 1969, his battalion was involved in Operation Taylor Common, a search-and-destroy offensive in the An Hoa basin of the Quang Nam Province of South Vietnam. According to several reports, Barrett's platoon was ambushed by a superior number of hardcore North Vietnamese soldiers and during an intense skirmish, he was hit heavily by AK-47 gunfire. A round struck him in the upper thigh then deflected off his leg bone upward into his internal organs.
The attack came on Feb. 27. He was taken to the hospital in Da Nang, where "the first couple of days they thought they had it under control," said Cohen, Barrett's friend from Basic. But the damage was too severe, and Barrett died on the operating table on Mar. 9. He was awarded the Purple Heart and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. His name can be found on the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C. — panel 30W, line 84.
"Everybody liked and respected D.J.," said Foor, whose other good friend and fellow lieutenant, John Joyce, perished about a month after Barrett. "He's what I'd call a Marine's Marine. He was a real leader, he had great respect from the troops he had there, and he was well regarded by all the other officers, too."
Cohen noted that when he attends the annual Marine Corps birthday celebration, it always concludes with a final toast to all the warriors who have fallen in combat — and he always thinks of Barrett.
Never to be forgotten, there are numerous remembrances of Barrett on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund website, including posts from Duke and military colleagues, and from a high school baseball teammate he mentored at Camp Lejeune: "I was in my junior year of college in 1969 and still recall the shock and disbelief I had when I heard he had died in Vietnam. But I will always remember how he so kindly and patiently helped a little young ninth grader become a better baseball player and person." Lejeune High School named Barrett to its Hall of Distinction in 2002, almost four decades after his days as a star student and three-sport athlete.
Barrett's memory also lives on in the works of prolific author W.E.B. Griffin, who wrote 59 epic novels. Between 1984 and 2006, he wrote a 10-book series called "The Corps" that covers the fighting men of the U.S. Marine Corps from World War II through the Korean War. On the first page of each of those books, Griffin pays tribute to Barrett: "The Corps is respectfully dedicated to the memory of second lieutenant Drew James Barrett III, USMC, Company K, 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines."
Griffin at one time was a neighbor of Barrett's father, who retired as a colonel the year after his son's death, following 30 years of service. Colonel Barrett passed away in 2003 at the age of 84.
#GoDuke
For Peter Foor, a retired Superior Court judge in Solano County, California, life's journey took him to Vietnam, where he was a decorated Marine lieutenant, and to Alaska, where he was a commercial fisherman. He attended law school, worked in private practice as well as a deputy district attorney, and spent 13 years trying a host of high profile cases for notorious clients as a public defender, before being appointed to the bench and presiding for more than 20 years, 1997-2018.
Through all of those experiences and more, he's never forgotten a young man he knew for barely eight months: D.J. Barrett, a fellow platoon commander with whom he served in the Vietnam War.
"It's been 45 years now, and there's hardly a day goes by that I don't think of him," Foor said during an interview seven years ago. "Certainly not a week. He'll always be 23 to me. I can see his face, his laugh. He was just a wonderful guy."
That sentiment is shared by many others whose lives intersected with Drew James Barrett III, a former Duke football and baseball player killed in Vietnam in 1969 just two months after his 24th birthday.
Allen Cohen spent only six months with Barrett, when they were classmates in Basic School at Quantico, Va., on their way to receiving their commissions as U.S. Marine Corps officers. They never crossed paths in Vietnam, but their brief time together resonated long afterward.
"He befriended everybody and was a true leader of men," Cohen recalled. "He was a great human being and I've never forgotten him. He's one of those people who makes an impact on your life."
One of Barrett's Duke classmates and football teammates, Durham native Page Wilson, still tears up when he thinks about college experiences shared with Barrett more than a half-century ago.
"Every year we have these football weekends where all the guys come back," he noted, "and there's not a year we don't talk about D.J. Not one. About how we wish he could be with us and how much more fun it would be if he was here. And we all mean it."
He was listed as Jim Barrett on the Duke football and baseball rosters of the mid-1960s, but most everyone knew him as D.J. The son of a career Marine officer, he was born during World War II in Denver and moved around a lot growing up. He came to Duke from Camp Lejeune High School on the Marine base in Jacksonville, N.C., after previously attending Robert E. Lee High in Springfield, Va.
Barrett played for the freshman football and baseball teams during his first year at Duke, 1963-64, then moved up to the varsity for his sophomore and junior years. Listed at 5-foot-11 and 180 pounds, he was described in the football media guide as tough, quick and a fast runner with good ability. Teammate Wilson said his toughness stood out more than his speed.
"He loved to hit, he loved contact and he had the respect of his teammates," Wilson recalled. "He was a very good football player. He didn't have a lot of raw talent, but he sure made up for it with grit and determination and heart and soul… He was just a great guy… one of the most popular guys on the team. Everybody loved him."
Barrett's best stretch athletically at Duke was the calendar year of 1965 when he played for two university legends who were coaching in their final seasons — although no one knew that at the time.
As a sophomore in the spring of '65, he was the starting third baseman for coach Ace Parker's Blue Devil baseball contingent. Parker batted him in the leadoff position for the season opener against Dartmouth and he singled to start Duke's half of the first inning, then came around to score the first run of the year. He remained at leadoff for the rest of the 25-game schedule and virtually never left the lineup. He batted .218 and shared the team lead in runs scored.
It was a hectic semester as Barrett was also involved in spring football practice under head coach Bill Murray. Preseason baseball workouts and football drills overlapped for about three weeks and Barrett kept up with both, reporting to the diamond from 1-3 p.m. and to the gridiron from 4-6 p.m. most afternoons. He played in the Blue-White spring football game on Mar. 20, then it was on to baseball fulltime for the Mar. 24 opener.
When the 1965 grid campaign rolled around, Murray had decided to go back to two-platoon football and Barrett, now a junior, earned a first-team position as the left safety in the defensive secondary. He started every contest, picked off passes against Rice and Wake Forest, made a big stop on a two-point conversion in a 21-13 victory over Pitt and helped the Blue Devils rout UNC 34-7 in the season finale. Murray announced his retirement to his players in the locker room immediately following the game, closing the book on his 15 seasons at the helm. When Parker, the backfield coach, was not named the successor, he turned in his resignation as well.
Tom Harp was hired to replace Murray and Barrett went through spring practice under the new regime, but he never made it to his senior year of 1966-67. With his father now a faculty member at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., Barrett joined the Marine Corps. Wilson suspects he would have eventually returned to finish school, but he was not surprised to see Barrett enlist.
"He always wanted to be a Marine," Wilson remembered. "He loved the Marines. He's the kind of guy if you had to share a foxhole with somebody, he'd be the one you'd share the foxhole with because you could count on him. He was dependable, reliable."
After Basic School, Barrett was commissioned as a lieutenant and assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment. He arrived in Vietnam during the summer of 1968 as a platoon commander for the Kilo Company. There were three rifle platoons in the company, led by lieutenants Barrett, Foor and John Joyce, another 24-year-old former college baseball player from North Dakota. They were involved in several missions together, including Operation Meade, a fierce engagement in the Dodge City area of South Vietnam.
Foor vividly recalls an unusual night that Barrett enjoyed with his father late in 1968. Colonel Barrett was in the area and wanted to have dinner with his son. Foor and Joyce both wanted to accompany him, but one lieutenant had to stay with the troops so the two staged a shooting contest to make the decision. Each enlisted one of their M79 grenade launchers to see who could get closest to hitting a tree about 400-500 yards away. Joyce's guy won, so he joined Lt. Barrett on a helicopter flight into Da Nang for an evening with Col. Barrett.
"Everybody was talking about it for weeks," Foor said. "It was really something, because sometimes we would be out in the field for four, five, six weeks in a row and wouldn't even get a shower or anything, just eating C-rats (rations). So this was a very special thing."
Foor spent a lot of time with Barrett and said D.J. had plenty of positive things to say about his college experience. He recognized Barrett's athleticism and remembers him writing home frequently.
"He was passionate about his family; he was very proud of his dad and he was also proud of being in the Marine Corps and being part of the effort over there. We all were.
"We didn't talk so much then about a future that was maybe there, maybe not. D.J. was more interested in the day-to-day things. He talked a lot about things out in the field," Foor continued. "What he was really looking forward to was some R&R. He'd never gone on R&R. We had a funny conversation about that one time. I think he was looking forward to going down to Australia, but I don't think he really cared where he was going — he was just looking forward to getting the hell out of there for a while."
Tragically, Barrett never had the opportunity to take leave for some rest and recuperation. In late February of 1969, his battalion was involved in Operation Taylor Common, a search-and-destroy offensive in the An Hoa basin of the Quang Nam Province of South Vietnam. According to several reports, Barrett's platoon was ambushed by a superior number of hardcore North Vietnamese soldiers and during an intense skirmish, he was hit heavily by AK-47 gunfire. A round struck him in the upper thigh then deflected off his leg bone upward into his internal organs.
The attack came on Feb. 27. He was taken to the hospital in Da Nang, where "the first couple of days they thought they had it under control," said Cohen, Barrett's friend from Basic. But the damage was too severe, and Barrett died on the operating table on Mar. 9. He was awarded the Purple Heart and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. His name can be found on the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C. — panel 30W, line 84.
"Everybody liked and respected D.J.," said Foor, whose other good friend and fellow lieutenant, John Joyce, perished about a month after Barrett. "He's what I'd call a Marine's Marine. He was a real leader, he had great respect from the troops he had there, and he was well regarded by all the other officers, too."
Cohen noted that when he attends the annual Marine Corps birthday celebration, it always concludes with a final toast to all the warriors who have fallen in combat — and he always thinks of Barrett.
Never to be forgotten, there are numerous remembrances of Barrett on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund website, including posts from Duke and military colleagues, and from a high school baseball teammate he mentored at Camp Lejeune: "I was in my junior year of college in 1969 and still recall the shock and disbelief I had when I heard he had died in Vietnam. But I will always remember how he so kindly and patiently helped a little young ninth grader become a better baseball player and person." Lejeune High School named Barrett to its Hall of Distinction in 2002, almost four decades after his days as a star student and three-sport athlete.
Barrett's memory also lives on in the works of prolific author W.E.B. Griffin, who wrote 59 epic novels. Between 1984 and 2006, he wrote a 10-book series called "The Corps" that covers the fighting men of the U.S. Marine Corps from World War II through the Korean War. On the first page of each of those books, Griffin pays tribute to Barrett: "The Corps is respectfully dedicated to the memory of second lieutenant Drew James Barrett III, USMC, Company K, 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines."
Griffin at one time was a neighbor of Barrett's father, who retired as a colonel the year after his son's death, following 30 years of service. Colonel Barrett passed away in 2003 at the age of 84.
#GoDuke
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