Remembering Private BARKER

After 48 years, U.S. Army Private Gary Adelbert Barker of Kimball will be honored at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial for his service and sacrifice to this country.

The pre-acceptance letter to his family reads: "On behalf of the Vietnam Veteran Memorial Fund, I am pleased to inform you that we would be proud to honor Gary Adelbert Barker at the 2023 In Memory ceremony on the grounds of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D. C."

The ceremony will be held June 17 and his widow Barb Barker, son Jerry Barker and daughter Sherry Barker Winstrom will attend the ceremony. Others attending the ceremony will be Gary's sister Janice Kirchholf, her husband and son from Lincoln, and Louise Hagstrom Barker, Barb's mother-in-law from Texas.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund honor is a final honor for Private Barker and was preceded by the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, Vietnam Service Medal, National Defense Medal, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Ribbon, the Marksman Badge and Rifle Bar.

After graduating from Kimball County High School in 1965, Gary Barker went to school in South Dakota to become a farrier, but as fate would have it Uncle Sam had a different plan for Barker.

Although many potential 19 year-olds draftees left for Canada, had deferments or found other ways to escape the draft, Barker accepted his draft requirement and left for bootcamp in May of 1966. According to Barb, he felt going into the Army was his obligation.

After attending bootcamp at Fort Bliss, Texas, Barker was sent to Virginia for school with the 20th Engineer Brigade at Ft. Belvoir. Married shortly before he was drafted, his new wife joined him in Virginia for a few months until he was shipped out to Vietnam in January 1967.

While in Vietnam, Barker's duties included hauling water, driving trucks and equipment, and repairing vehicles. With just 21 days left in his year long deployment, Barker was hit with shrapnel and wounded on Feb. 2, 1968.

On Feb. 8, 1968, a Western Nebraska Observer article reported that "Mr. and Mrs. Merle Barker received word Sunday that their son, Gary, who has been stationed at Laikhe (Lai Khe) about 50 miles north of Saigon, was wounded as a result of hostile action last Friday."

The telegram stated that Gary received fragment wounds on his left shoulder and back from a "mortar round" while at his base camp and is hospitalized in Vietnam."

His wife, Barb, recalled that he was in a foxhole and was hit with shrapnel while sleeping.

Barker returned to the United States and his hospitalization and rehabilitation continued for eight months at Fitzsimmons Hospital in Denver.

His wife of less than a year would recall many trips to Denver to visit him. Eventually after his release from Fitzsimmons, Barker took advantage of a Fitzsimmons jobs program. That jobs program took him and his family to Saratoga, Wyoming to worked in a hardware store for eight months.

Although severely handicapped from the wounds, Barker took a job with the Kimball County Road Department as a road grader operator until his death in July 1975 at just 27 years old.

Never one to be bitter about his predicament, nor make political statements, when he returned to the United States, he simply "moved forward" and had a "family to support," Barb reflected.

In living with the effects of the wounds and nerve damage to his left arm, shoulder, back and hand, his health slowly declined. The last few months of Barker's life he rapidly suffered from loss of balance, loss of control, pain, and the inability of doctors to figure out the diagnosis.

Ironically, the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the same year that Gary Barker succumbed to the effects and impact of the shrapnel wounds he had received

The Barkers had three children. When their father died Jerry was 8 years old , Kerry was 5, and Sherry was a 2-year-old toddler.